Kvest – Ship. Shop. Share.

A web application enabling peer to peer international shipping based in India

Kvest as a concept was shortlisted to pitch at Shark Tank India and as a prerequisite they had to move their operations from Ship. Shop. Share. (currently a free-to-use service running as a private Facebook group) to their own digital platform and create a robust business model around it. While the practical development of such a digital product would take significant investment, a high fidelity prototype of the product would help explain the concept and in raising funds. This is where I stepped into the picture.

02 Overview

Role
Product Designer

Type
Freelance

Timeline
4 weeks

Tools
Google suite | Airtable | Adobe XD | Illustrator

What this project is and what to expect

India’s premier sustainable, global peer-to-peer shipping platform for consumer goods. Kvest i.e. Ship. Shop. Share. is a community powered courier concept where members carry products for each other and earn a monetary reward for delivering them. One can meet with global travelers and request them to bring products from any part of the world. It leverages the power of community to provide a sustainable answer

01.

Can further change significantly

Each pitch to a new stakeholders and investor is bringing more adjustments and modifications hence the project is still in its testing stage

02.

Wont be developed soon

Since the project was conceptual to an extent and lacking financial resources the product wont be developed anytime soon until fully mapped and tested.

03.

A crunch of time

While the project had potential and ambition, only 4-5 weeks for research, design and iteration went into building it until the pitch day.

Researching the opportunity of intervention space

Based on 2020 air traffic data (that includes US Domestic enplanements, India Domestic enplanements and India-US enplanements) 460 million people make up the available market i.e travelers flying between USA and India, with at least 276 million people falling under the serviceable market. Its important to note that Kvests most active Indian users import and send items majorly to the US.

USA

Beachhead Market

Why now?

01

Sharing economy to grow at 2000 % to become a 350 billion dollar
industry in the next 5-7 years

02

Courier, express and parcel (CEP) market to grow at >10.5 % CAGR

What are existing peer to peer shipping platforms and solutions?

Upon first glance only it was obvious that there are plenty of crowdsourced delivery platforms existing and there are also a lot of competitors that have been around for a while. So it was paramount to understand what Kvest could offer and how they could improve.

Analyzing some of the most popular shipping platforms revealed that they tend to be more regional (mostly western) and not catering in the Indian context. There was a general lack of trust, since some missed crucial background checks while others did not verify/check the ads posted for malicious/misleading information, uncertain and long delivery also contributed to the same. Some notable features include optional insurance services, advance fee calculation and easy onboarding. Professional Courier services do boast relatively more speed and trustworthiness but come with an expensive price tag

Key takeaways 

• None have credibly tried to cater to the Indian market 
• There is an overall lack of trust from the user
• Lack of investment in time, money and effort to create a better user interface 
• Lack of transparency when it comes to things like realistic delivery timing
• Ideally targeting a young demographic like students and backpackers

01

High shipping costs

01

High carbon footprint

01

Longer delivery time and setup

01

Many undeliverable products

Interviewing users on use of P2P shipping service

The user interviews revealed 4 key insights:

How would you order an item that you want from abroad? To understand this question, I conducted several interviews via phone and video call to learn about:

• Processes and resources that experienced shoppers use to help them obtain the consumer goods that they want to import
• Concerns or barriers that are preventing users from opting to P2P shipping service.

(It is important to note that this exercise was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic when outdoor activity is much more restricted and all international travels were at a halt.)

01

A lack of knowledge on the concept 

The concept of crowdsourced shipping is very new in the Indian context and many of the people I interviewed werent even aware of the same

02

Difficulty in finding travelers 

Users found finding travelers the most difficult task, matching the dates of their journey and negotiating for space and fee.

03

Most rely on personal and extended contacts

Messaging a friend of a friend, posting stories on social media and NRI relatives were some of the most common and trusted solution to the challenge.

04

Fear of scam and lack of trust

Users expressed a distinct hesitation of paying upfront to a strangers and giving credibility to informal groups on social media platforms

Building User Empathy

The competitive analysis and user interviews gave me a significant understanding of who the users were and how they might use and expect a P2P shipping platform to be. I focused on expanding those findings into concrete visualizations that would help me empathize with users and define the product.

Understanding a typical users journey on Kvest facebook group

Talking to users helped me realize there was a fear of the unknown and of having no experience of using such a system of ordering products in India. I instead turned to users who actually ordered and received products using Kvests FB group to understand their decision making process by dissecting their entire journey. I created a user journey map to graph out the thoughts, feelings, and sights that my interviewees had shared with me to identify main touch points the digital platform would need to cover.

Information Architecture

Given that this was a community driven web application that offered peer to peer shipping, I proposed a sitemap that incorporated core content for ordering, shipping, user transparency and communication.

USER FLOW INTERACTION

Following the site architecture, I laid out task flows of a user visiting the site, Signing up, and post a request for either ordering an item as a shopper or sharing excess baggage space as a traveler. The flows identify and consider how various tasks are connected throughout the onboarding process.

A challenge I faced was figuring out how to minimize the information required while posting a request and how to make it as simple as possible. Based on existing design patterns, users would expect the onboarding process to be as light as possible and the services that Kvest offers to be easily accessible, but from a business and general security standpoint it was important to include things like KYC check, number verification and shipment details etc.

Low fidelity sketches

I ideated over potential solutions and user flows. I used sketches and wireframing on Whimsical to solidify ideas and draw out how I wanted the interactions to work.

Building a robust Design System

I worked on building the design system for our web application to bring consistency in the interaction experience throughout the website. The branding work was already done for this concept so the goal was to take the existing style guide and elevating it into a robust and scalable system.

Usability testing, findings & iterations

I conducted a small usability test with 4 individuals. I was looking to test clarity, simplicity and comprehension of the entire concept.

Wireframe designs were iterated upon through usability testing and client feedback, with each iteration improving on design choices and visual hierarchy.

Testing was conducted remotely with on virtual meetings online. I was able to observe participants interactions and had them think aloud as they navigated through a prototype.

Before

The login page didn’t have any social media login, the text ‘verify’ wasn’t clear to the users. The background was distracting. New user didn’t know how to get out of this page.

Before

After

Added facebook as an option to login through as well, gave an option to redirect to signup and removed the background section to make everything more clean and clear.

After

There was no way of knowing how big the process of filling in information was

Before

Users found the entire process of adding information lengthy and with too many steps

Added a simple progress bar to highlight at what stage of filling information was and how much was left

After

Reduced the 6 stage posting ad process down to just three and made it more compact so the user does not perceive it to be very long

Kvest Web app experience

Putting everything together I created a look and feel of how the concept of Kvest would be communicated and the system behind it experienced by its users.

Need for content moderation

More control to the user

More options for the infamous last mile delivery

Whats Next?

The concept of Kvest was presented at Shark tank India as one of the finalists. Now under investor review, at the moment Kvest design work is paused to allow business planning to catch up. Per the clients timeline, our next steps are as follows:

1. Build out phase 2 & 3 features and make the web app mobile responsive.
2. Finalize the business model and use of crucial features pending from the stakeholder’s end. Then Iterate and test further based on the same changes.
3. Conduct second round of user testing in the field, to identify active usability issues
4. Work with Kvest’s contract developer for a smooth and well communicated design assets handover to create live website.

Reflecting on the project outcomes

I knew going into this project that it would be a challenge. Would I be able a simple and easy to use product in the limited timeframe? What features are most important to focus on? Is there a need for a mobile app as well?  Given the novelty of the problems peer to peer shipping is trying to cater to, what are some ways a web app solution can provide relief and be familiar as well? Towards the end I found myself truly enjoying the process of designing and strategizing flows and user interactions.

Some key takeaways are:

• Create a well-organized project plan. 

With so many issues to consider and a massive crunch of time, a good strategy will be to prioritize what’s the need of the hour and keep track of all backlogs at the same time to revisit.

• Understand tradeoffs in decision-making. 

Knowing when and why to use a particular tool or research strategy is part of the critical-thinking needed to successfully deliver.

• Use existing patterns to reduce cognitive load.

Spending time designing a unique interaction for a common function isnt necessary if users already expect it to work a certain way.

• Adapting to changing requirements

Kvest is a project where the design work came in a little early before established business planning. I learned a lot about creating visual branding when there were changing requirements and no concrete assets to work off of. It was rewarding to see our digital product i.e web application crafted from scratch.