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Snow Plow tracker 

An application that shows live plowing road conditions to help drivers travel safely in snowy road conditions.

Duration: 13 weeks
Coursework: User Experience methodology 
Type of coursework: Group project with a team of 5 
Software used: Figma, Mural, Adobe Illustrator

 

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Driving in the winter has been one of many drivers' biggest safety driving challenges.

Drivers may skid or lose control of their vehicles more easily due to the slippery road. When the snowfall is heavy, snow plowers might take longer time to clear the road for drivers to travel safely. Based on a statistic by the U.S Department of Transportation:

"Each year, over 1,300 people are killed and more than 116,800 people are injured in vehicle crashes on snowy, slushy or icy pavement annual." 

U.S Department of Transportation

U.S Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration

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QUESTION STATEMENT

How might we find a way to better inform drivers of cleared and uncleared roads and give live updates on the safest and best routes to travel?

PROCESS

Lean UX Canvas

Using the Lean UX Canvas by Jeff Gothelf, our team brainstormed the business and user needs and created a few hypotheses on Mural. One of the hypotheses shown above stated: 

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Qualitative data collection

We've conducted 7 online interviews and an online survey to understand the day-to-day life of a typical driver and how they plan prior to driving in snowy road conditions. 

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Affinity mapping

After conducting online interviews, we organized our findings into 7 categories with the quotes from the data collected. This information helped us to brainstorm essential features on our final app that would serve our user needs. 

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Persona

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We've created four different personas, 3 drivers and 1 snow plow worker to better understand our user pain points and behavior. The diagram above is one of our personas, named Delivery Dan. 

Empathy map- Delivery Dan

This map, along with four other maps were created to help our team gain a deeper understanding of priotirizing user needs and help in decision making as we move forward. 

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User journey

A user journey map was developed based on our collected data to help visualize a user's thought process and decision-making. The journey begins by using the app before leaving the house to check the road condition until reaching the final destination.

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Constrains

From the user journey, we categorize the user needs into "Must" and "Should" to narrow down the user scope and translate the "Must" information into features from most crucial to important hierarchy order.

MUST

  • Up to date information to show what roads are plowed/not plowed.

  • Include favored features from currently used applications (estimated destination time, allow users to submit hazard warnings).

  • Allow users to “grade” roads

SHOULD (RECOMMENDED)

  • Share location with a loved one

  • External assistance, with tipping service

  • Rerouting advice

  • Exit information

  • Alert others that the driver took a different route

  • Nearest gas station information

Low-fidelity wireframe

We brainstorm the features of the app that would potentially serve our user needs. The diagram below shows the process from low- to high-fidelity wireframes. 

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Mid-fidelity wireframe

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High-fidelity wireframes

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Reflection

What was the most challenging part?

  • Advocate for user-centered designs

  • Collaborated with team members across different time zones

What was the most enjoyable part?

  • Making design decisions based on the research from start till the end

  • Collaborated with a team to share ideas and opinions

What did I learn from this? 

  • Research is essential to understand user behavior and needs

  • Using Lean UX (agile) approach to solve problems 

What were the success? 

  • Applying different UX methodology into one project

  • Made connections with my team members

What were the limitations? 

  • The content from the Lean UX canvas was based on our assumptions.

  • It would be great to do more research and discovery in order to validate or invalidate our assumptions. 

What were the failure?

  • The final UI design were based on our preference.

  • If given more time, we would conduct user testing to find out usability problems and UI designs that according to users' needs and expectations. 

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