Rental Delivery Product
Overview
An enterprise client (a global brand of outdoor gear and apparel) signed onto the Awayco rental platform to launch their first rental delivery to door service. The service would enable customers to rent their wide range of products for enjoyment on a trip or to try a product before purchase.
To launch the service, we needed to build several key features into the platform. I was part of a design team of 3 to gather requirements and design the user flows and UIs for the new features. My role spanned across UX and UI design.
Unique Needs
There were three broad feature areas: 1) Shipment of products, 2) Kits composed of different products, 3) Theming improvements to align with the brand's existing style guide.
The shipping feature was particularly challenging. It involved interactions with multiple actors in the system: customer end-users, the logistics team, and the customer service team.
The customer needed to be certain that they would receive their item in time for their trip. They also needed to be aware of their obligations to return the item back to the company. We communicated this by clearly marking "delivered by" and "return on" dates based on their selected rental dates, and sent update and reminder notification emails.
Next, the delivery timings needed to be achievable from a logistics perspective. We interviewed the logistics centre team members to find out about the common shipping times, the days of operation, the time for cleaning an item upon return. These details were factored into the item availability logic.
Finally, we interviewed the customer service team to understand the common questions related to shipping and how they could be resolved. This resulted in several additional key pieces of information to be added to the administration console.
The thorough process we undertook to understand and cater for the complex interplays between different actors will help ensure that the customer has a great experience of the rental service.
Managing Timelines
Due to the short timeframe needed to launch the product, we crafted the right balance of features to include on the first launch and planned out subsequent feature releases. They needed to line up with the client's broad marketing plan, the readiness of internal processes, and team training.
I collaborated with senior team members in Awayco and the client company to develop a project schedule that would meet the needs for design, implementation, testing, soft launch, and public launches. We set up collaborative tools such as Clubhouse, Figma, Slack, and Miro to ensure smooth and synchronised execution of the project.
Refining Requirements and Design
The development of features was an intensive iterative process. We discerned requirements from interviews, meetings, and email exchanges with the client's UX, logistics and customer service teams. These were then developed into initial flow diagrams, designs, and prototypes to communicate features and draw out refinements.
We kept the engineering team abreast of every stage of this process to help generate efficient implementations and to ensure that they were feasible within the allotted timeframes.
Outcome
The project is currently approaching UAT testing and scheduled for soft launch by the end of the quarter. Feedback from the client on the process and designs has been very positive and discussions are already underway for continued development work beyond launch.