Relo

Market research and competitive analysis

We looked for trends and stats for the mobility and relocation industry first and then the competitors especially in the UK and the US. None of them have an iOS or an Android app comprehensive enough to cater to user needs.

We found out that new innovative technologies like AI and bots are touching every industry and mobility is no exception. This was the foundation of "REBOT", a chatbot we would eventually design for the RELO app. REBOT will help users from getting quotations and on boarding to more complex tasks like reminders, notifications and troubleshooting.

User Interviews

We set our focus to find out people's experiences in relocation. We wanted to understand why relocated and how they managed various activities and co-ordinated with different people during the whole process. We targeted people who have relocated domestically and internationally.

Some key output of the research —
1. Relocating is much tougher with family and kids.
2. You need local help in finding about good schools, which you can't if you are out of the destination country
3. Change in visa rule delayed their travel by a month.
4. Users want to find the new home near hospitals and schools.
5. Users want to sort out home and school before they land in the destination country.
6. Area orientation and local language training is a must.
7. The proof of address which is a must for schools, banks and doctors should be taken care of before moving.

We focused on Julia to create our persona out of this research. She is a teacher in Qatar where she moved 2 years ago. They faced lot of difficulties during their relocation as they missed the visa rule change which delayed their travel by a month.

After the persona development, we created an empathy map and a story board to understand Sam's motivations and experiences. We found out him to be very attention-to-detail archetype in that he checks everything closely before making a purchase.

While synthesising the observations from our Empathy phase we now focussed on creating meaningful and actionable problem statements. These will eventually help us kick start the ideation process in the right direction.

We began the ideate phase by Crazy 8 a core design sprint method — sketch 8 ideas in 8 minutes to generate a variety of solutions to our challenge.

Now was the time to bring in all the information to create a sitemap that would be the foundation for how the user will experience the features of this product. The focus was only creating the sitemap for this additional remittance service.

We moved to creating a simple user flow that will help Julia to get notifications of change in Visa rules. We used microframes (using the Crazy 8 exercise) in our user-flows as they are much effective and makes the subsequent design steps much easier.

We used the microframes, sitemap & user-flow to create simple wireframes. We digitized the paper wireframes using Sketch.

We wanted a simple yet a modern and fresh look for RELO. So, we chose white and blue colour palette with colourful icons on the homepage. Using this colour palette and adjectives in mind we developed the hi fi designs. We used the user flow to build an interactive prototype then. We then conducted a usability test and observed users testing it.

Using these observations from the usability tests we created an affinity map which highlighted the pains and gains of the user along with certain suggestions that all users had in common. We prioritised the design changes and incorporated that in our designs.

I have thoroughly enjoyed designing this product. Designing a chatbot for RELO was a real learning experience for me. I have learned at least the basics of designing a good conversational interface.

I have focussed on a simple yet important feature of timely notification and effective communication but when backed up by a powerful AI, the bots can be designed to be very effective in answering questions and solving user problems. I also focussed on designing a dashboard that gives the user a single place to manage their relocation.