20 min read

Synopsis

CarsArrive is North America’s largest hauler of used cars. It transports over 3 Million vehicles every year. Notable clients include Toyota, Volkswagen, Honda, etc. To read more about the company, please visit my case study for the landing page here.

The mobile app is the most important component of the CarsArrive ecosystem. Over 50,000 truck drivers use this application with over 10,000 active users every day. To read more about the redesign, please visit here.

Inspection is the most important part of the app. The truck drivers need to inspect each vehicle in their assignment to see if its damaged in any way. The old inspection has been one of the biggest pain points of the app. It impacted business on both ends. The long inspection times also meant lost revenue for a lot of clients and truck drivers.

I worked on the complete overhaul of the inspection process from 0 to 1. My final designs were a result of multiple iterations, feedback and research.

Quick Facts

My Role
Research, High-fidelity prototyping, User testing, Assisting Developers,  Conducting meetings with stakeholders and CEO 
Tools
Created for
Mobile Phones, Tablets
Time frame
December 2020 - January 2021 (1 year+)
User base
50,000
Live Demo

Outcomes

4x Faster Inspection Process
The new inspection process was significantly faster than the old one.
A Hit amongst users
The new inspection workflow worked well with the users and it helped improve their workflow substantially.
Attention

How I met your inspection?

Kids, I'm going to tell you an incredible story – the story of how I met your inspection. If you have 9 years (minutes), click on the solid white button to read the entire story.
Scene 1

Inspecting Inspection!

The Old Process

Coming onto the most crucial aspect of the app, the dreaded inspection process. A truck driver needs to inspect each vehicle that they are picking up to check for loose items, damages, and severity of damage. This is how the old process goes:
Step 1: Select Vehicle to inspect
On this page, the driver can see all the vehicles of the particular assignment. He can then pick which one to inspect first. In this example, there was just one vehicle in the assignment. We call them "Units". There can be up to 10 units per assignment.
Selecting vehicles to inspect
Step 2: Select Type of Vehicle
In this step, the user simply needs to select the category of the vehicle.
Select Type of Vehicle
Step 3: Windows Phone Layout Again!
The next step brings you back to the tile layout similar to the old Home Screen. From here, the driver can select either to do loose items inspection or vehicle inspection or click pictures.

⛔️ ISSUE: Adding an extra click or step for the user
Choosing the next steps
Step 4: Loose Items Inspection
Loose item inspection, as the name suggests, is the inspection of quantifiable things with a simple Yes or No answer.

⛔️ ISSUE: No default state. User has to choose an answer for every question
Loose Items Inspection
Step 5: Choosing the side to inspect
This is where the major part of inspection begins. The driver needs to select which part of the vehicle they want to inspect first.

⛔️ ISSUE: Additional clicks.
Choosing sides to inspect
Step 6: Damage identification
The driver needs to draw on a blueprint of the vehicle to mark where they see the damage. After that, they now have to go through 3 Additional steps to identify the damages.

1. Area: The user has to select which area of the car was damaged. For eg. front wheel, back wheel, etc.

⛔️ ISSUE: There were 21 options to choose from. Yes, 21!

2. Type: Now, the user has to select the type of damage. For eg. broken, chipped, sratched, etc.

⛔️ ISSUE: There were 17 options to choose from. And majority of those options were confusing.

3. Severity: After marking the area and type, next step was to mark severity of the damage. The user had to choose from options like 2.5 inch of diameter to 5 inch of diameter, 5.0 inch of diameter to 7.5 inch of diameter.

⛔️ ISSUE: There were 8 long and confusing options to choose from. Plus, these were not human readable in any way!
Confusing and long inspection process
Step 7: Signing off the parking lot
Once the inspection is done, the driver loads the vehicle onto the hauler truck and takes the signature of the agent in the origin digitally and takes off to the destination.
Signing off the parking lot

Pain Points

Time is Money
Most truck drivers and companies work on a hourly model, and for multiple companies at once. For them, the time consuming inspection meant lost business.
Compaints of the users on App Store regarding lost revenue
Too many options
21 options for area, 17 options for type of damages and 8 options for severity on a small device in a scroll wheel UI element in harsh weather conditions. Need I say more?
Source : GetFeedback
Confusing Choices
As mentioned before, most of the truck drivers are not tech savvy. The choices that the old inspection had were too complicated to understand. On top of that using "codes" made it even more tough on the users.
Compaints of the users on App Store regarding lost revenue
Weather Conditions
The company works throughout the year and across all regions of North America. This means, at times, the weather conditions can be very harsh for the truck drivers to complete inspection process, or do any other tasks in the app.

Again, the most important part of this was inspection, and it got even worse during bad weather conditions.
App store reviews about harsh weather conditions
Scene 2

Working on Inspection!

Version 1

Taking into consideration all the issues faced by the user, I went ahead and created an all new inspection process!
Vehicle Choices
A sleeker way of choosing vehicles. Once vehicle is chosen, the user can and do loose items inspection.
Loose Item Inspection
Replaced Yes/No with checkbox buttons to select only those items that apply. By default, all items will not be present.
Vehicle Inspection
If driver sees no damage, BANG! Select No Damage and move on to the next one without wasting time. 
Walk them through the process
Progress bar on the top. Take them step by step as one would naturally move around a Car. Now, select "Report Damage".
Take Picture
On top, show side of the car again & show a clear description of what is expected from the user. 
Mark Damages
After clicking the picture, the user can mark damage on the vehicle or retake the photo.
Showing relevant options
Depending upon which side of the car you are at, the options for area will show only those. Tap and go to choose multiple damage areas together.
Easier choices to make
For each area that was marked in previous step, user can now choose the type and severity of damage relevant to that area.
Human Readable Codes
Marking severity becomes easier now by reducing the options to 5, and using easier to understand language.
Showing summary
Showing a summary of what was marked gives the user a chance to confirm his choices and be able to edit them.
Avoiding Errors
The users won't be able to click on Submit unless they complete all the required steps. This is done to avoid errors.
Final Screen
Once the user clicks on submit on this page, they will either be taken to inspect other vehicles or sign off.

What worked

Loose Item Inspections
By using a checkbox style button layout, it was faster to do loose item inspection now. The user did not have to worry about going through each option and selecting yes or no.
Walking the users through the process
Instead of making the users select every side each time, it was easier to walk them through the side of the vehicle in a more natural way. This also meant they do not have to worry about making choices.
Reducing options
By reducing the options for damage types, area and severity, it became easier to choose amongst the fewer options presented to the user. This would set a benchmark for all future versions.

What didn't

Still time consuming
Despite reducing the options and taking away a few clicks, the process was still time consuming according to the standards we expected.
Marking damages is still tough
Drawing lines on an image to mark damage was still tough because of larger thumb sizes and harsh weather conditions.
Taking pictures in portrait orientation
The idea was to take the orientation fixed so that the users do not need to change it again and again. But, in portrait orientation, it was difficult to fit the entire image by standing close to the car. The driver needed to go back so that they can cover the entire portion of the side.
Restrictions with a few clients
Some of the clients need atleast 4 photographs to be taken. By giving the option of "No Damage", it might hurt their business, and hence it was important to incorporate that into the revised designs.
Scene 3

Final Revisions

Retaining the good

There were some elements from the previous iteration that worked well. It was important to retain those and give them some final finishing touches with respect to the UI.

Here's how that went
Vehicle Choices
Streamlined the icons and added some white space to make it cleaner
Loose Item Inspection
Improved the language to "Please select all items present".
Tap & Go Buttons
Increased the size of the buttons to accommodate larger thumbs

Innovating for the rest

The issues with the vehicle inspection found in Iteration 1 needed to be improved. Goal was to make the process faster, less confusing, and easy to navigate.

This is how it turned out :) 
All New Landscape Mode for Vehicle Inspection
Taking the previous feedback into consideration, I decided to go with a landscape orientation view for vehicle damage so that the drivers can fit in maximum of the image in the frame. We also show which side of the vehicle they need to take a picture of on the left hand side!
Vehicle Guides for taking photos
With the help of Dayan, I thought of adding vehicle guides for each side of the vehicle to give the drivers a sense of how they should fit the vehicle in the frame.
Setting a standard that needs minimal adjusting for various clients
I decided to set a standard - 4 photos of 4 sides of the car, which will be mandatory. Some clients require things like car keys, odometer reading, etc. I added an additional field called "Extras" that will be configurable for specific clients. This way the experience remains consistent. Also, now a truck driver can select No Damage and move ahead too, because they will have proof of the image.
Continued the Tap-to-go style to mark damages. Removed Drawing.
From the previous step, you select a type of damage that you see. For example, Faded. You simply keep tapping wherever you see "Faded" on that side of the vehicle. If you see other damages, simply click from the options below and repeat the process.
Reduced Damage types to 8. Removed Area, and Severity of Damages.
With phone cameras being high resolution these days, I proposed that we did not need the need for Area and Severity. By marking the damages on the photo itself instead of a blueprint, one could clearly see which area was damaged. Severity was decided mutually amongst the team to be removed altogether since it was an outdated feature.

Finishing off

Refined the UI for the final screens and made the process smooth from start to end!
Summary Screen
Sign off screen

Onboarding

With a completely new inspection process, it was important to onboard users correctly and make sure they understood the new features.

There were the in-app onboarding screens that I created that would open first time the user tries doing inspection.

It can later be found under Tutorials page inside the app.

Tablet Screens

There are a few sets of users that use CarsArrive on a tablet. Hence, I also created a few screens for tablets, and worked with the developers to fine tune those designs for tablet viewing.
Loose Item Inspection
Vehicle Inspection
Digital Signature
Scene 4

Signing off at CarsArrive

Context

Soon after finishing the designs, I decided to quit CarsArrive to pursue a new opportunity. This was my last hoorah with the wonderful team at CarsArrive.

I was so grateful for this opportunity as this was a big project at such an early stage of my career.

Reactions

I had left the company by the time the app launched, but I was still in touch with my manager, Pradeep, and constantly asked him about any feedback that we received for the new app.

There were not many quantifiable outcomes except the inspection time.
Overall, I was able to help make the inspection 4 times faster than the original inspection.

Other than that, users were really happy with the new workflow, and I will keep updating this page once I get hold of more reviews.
Conversation snippet with my manager

Reflection

Restrictions should not bog me down
Despite limited resources, and restrictions, I am proud of the product that I was able to create. I kept working hard, did plenty of research and came up with solutions efficiently.

Learning from competitors
I used to be a very egotistic designer in my early days thinking that my approach is better than others. However, working at CarsArrive and doing competitive research meant that I could take inspiration from other companies and improve upon them rather than turning the wheel.

Should have added haptics, micro-interactions, animations
Limited resources, plus a lack of knowledge in micro-interactions and animations meant that the product was missing that last bit of oomph factor.

Learnings

  • First mobile app product that was shipped
  • Improved my research skills
  • Working towards feasible yet effective solutions with developers

Crew

Pradeep Mahdevu
VP of Product
Ketan Pathak
iOS Developer
Gokul Chavan
Android Developer
Dayan Paul
Graphic Designer (Contractor) for animations
Devender Thakur
Product Lead
Michael Briggs
Founder, President and CEO

In case you missed the previous episodes

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