Conversational Self Inspection
UX DESIGN | RESEARCH | PROTOTYPING
My Role and Responsibilities
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Research : Competitive research
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Concept Building
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UX Design: Sketches, Wireframing, Usability Testing
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Prototyping
About the Project
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Internship Project at OLX Autos
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Project Duration : Jan'20 - May'20
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Internship mentor : Shalab Vaishnav
Tools used
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Figma
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Sketch
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Miro
Context
About OLX Autos
OLX Autos is one of the 30+ companies owned by the OLX Group and has presence in several countries like India. Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Columbia, Indonesia etc.
OLX Autos is an online Car trading platform. User can sell their Car, buy one from the car listings from the platform or get their purchase financed by OLX. Selling, Buying and Finance are the three verticals OLX Autos deals with. They have Android, iOS as well as Web platforms.
This Project fell under the selling vertical, we later explored its implementation in Finance as well.
Understanding the Process
How does the selling a Car on OLX happen?
User visits OLX App to sell a Car
Performs Self Inspection
Get a Quote for the Car
Instant Payment
CAR SOLD!
What is Self Inspection?
Before understanding what self inspection is, lets understand what a Car inspection is and how it takes place.
While selling a used Car, one needs a detailed analysis of the Car before putting a price on it. During the inspection process an expert has to take a look at the car to access it's condition. This process of inspecting. the Car to derive its condition is known as Inspection.
"Self Inspection" as the word suggests is doing the Car inspection process yourself!
In Self Inspection the user is asked for enough data points about the Car to help us give them a almost final price for their Car. We need the following details from the user :
Car Basic Details
Car Brand
Car Variant
Registration Year
Fuel Type
Insurance Type
Transmission type
Car Condition Details
AC Condition
Clutch condition
Engine Condition
Smoke Colour
Oil leakages
Additional Accessories
Car Photos
Image of front & back side
Image of left & right side
Image of Odometer
Image of Car interiors
Identifying Pain points
What does OLX need from the User?
What does a user want?
OLX needs this information in order to generate a quote for the Car:
1. The Basic Details of the Car
2. Answers about the condition of the Car
3. Pictures of the Car
4. User details
Let's look at what the user's expectations and needs from the process are:
1. The best possible price quote for his/her Car
2. To be done with the process with least effort
3. To do the process on their own
How did we arrive at what we wanted to solve for?
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Build Hypothesis
Based on our understanding, we went ahead and listed down possible user pain points that we as designers could identify
02.
Validate hypothesis based on research and existing user persona
Based on previous research done on the product and the prominent personas of the product we tried to narrow down the pain-points
03.
Prioritize
Based on data we prioritised the problems we need to solve for first
Pain-Points Hypothesis
1. During self Inspection, the user has to answer a lot of questions and also take pictures of the Car. The User might find the process too long or tiresome.
2. While answering questions about the working condition of the Car, users could find some questions very technical and might struggle finding the right answers.
3. Some users coming on the Platform would not understand if the price given is the fair price for their Car. As everyone is not equal familiar with how Car prices depreciate.
4. Not all users would be equally involved with their Car, the platform will have to be inclusive of pros as well newbies.
Bucketing the Pain-points
1. INCLUSIVITY
Bucketing the points 2, 3 , 4 together basically means making the platform inclusive of all kinds of users. Considering men were the major persona on OLX, we tried to understand the pain points faced by women and elderly people
Concept video depicting pain points of women users
Concept video depicting pain points of elderly users
Incase of women users in India :
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They might not know certain Technical Details about cars and might need help with it
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They tend to be less involved in financial matters about the car like insurance type etc
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They prefer having holistic end to end experiences rather than only goal driven experiences
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They might not be familiar to car resell price trends and might face difficulty gauging the quote
Incase of older adults in India :
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They might need Assistance to navigate through the Platform and make the right choices
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They Fear online Deals, they need to be assured about the authenticity of the process
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They feel Insecure About sharing any personal details online and need to be reassured about safety
2. ENGAGEMENT AND EASE OF USE
Making the information gathering experience delightful by making the experience engaging and easy to complete will help users not find the process too long or tiresome.
"How can we HUMANISE the experience"
"How to ASSIST the user better"
"How can we improve the INFORMATION GATHERING EXPERIENCE"
"How can we make the process more INCLUSIVE"
Concept building
Based on the identified user problems, the next step was to start building out concepts to solve the problems. Here are the top few concepts that were built :
A lot of exploration Later...
Concept #1
Conversational Self Inspection with OLX as a Buyer or Inspection Engineer
Conversations are the most natural ways of exchanging information. Also, when a Car buyer ask a seller about his/her car, the seller is keen to provide the right information to make a sale.
In this concept, we tried to replicate real buyer-seller conversations to make the information gathering experience better.
Positives :
1. Humanizes the process
2. Helps understand why certain question are needed
3. Makes the information taking process smoother
4. We can explain things better
Negatives :
1. Users might expect to talk to a real person, and get disappointed
Concept #2
Build your own Car
This concept tries to add elements of Gamification to the process. With every question that the user answers the Car eventually gets built, to replicate his/her exact Car.
Positives :
1. Engaging because of visual interaction
2. Real time impact can be motivating for the user
3. The feeling of building something imparts a sense of satisfaction to the user
Negatives :
1. For people who just wanted to get done with the process might not want a elaborate experience
2. Difficulty of implementation
Concept #3
Camera as the assistant
In this concept, the conversation is happening on the camera interface, the cues are received on the Camera screens and the user provides all the necessary information through images.
Positives :
1. Low effort as user would only have to take a few images
2. Authentic data as images would give quality data
Negatives :
1. Would require high image processing capabilities to read up data from images
To finalise a concept and get more ideas and critics, I conducted a Workshop with my design team at OLX
I used the Dreamer, Optimist, Critic workshop framework for this one.
I surfaced the concept for the team and asked each team member to get into the shoes of a :
DREAMER
- Generates a lot of ideas around the concept
- Is free to imagine and suggest anything
- Doesn't think about Constraints
OPTIMIST
- Talks about what all things he/she likes about the concept
CRITIC
- Gives Feedback around the concept
- Finds Weak points
- Wants to prevent failures
WORKSHOP INSIGHTS (20 Participants from the Design team participated)
Final Concept!
CONCEPT #1
Conversational Self Inspection with OLX as a Buyer or Inspection Engineer
Based on the the feedback from the workshop and analysis of concepts basis feasibility, impact and usability a final concept was picked!
Solution
What would the overall concept be?
The user will complete the Self evaluation process as a conversation with a assistant with a Buyer Persona. The assistant would ask the information required in the Self inspection journey in the conversation and the user would be answering it.
The Benefits of this approach are :
1. Using conversations and a human buyer tone we can persuade the user to answer the questions.
2. The Process can be made slightly informal and engaging using conversations.
3. The persona characteristics could be customized for different user segments to make the process inclusive of all kind of users.
4. Easy error redirection : The human like persona can help in guiding the user if he commits a error
A concept video by me to show a conversation between a buyer and seller
Final Designs
Introducing the Assistant
Before finalising on what the assistant should look like, a lot of different styles like 3D characters, abstract styles inspired from siri. cortana were explored
To keep the essence of real conversations, a decision to keep a human face was taken.
Meet Arik!
Arik is from OLX. He wants to buy your car. But before that he needs to inspect the car by asking a few question.
Arik introduces himself and what the conversation will entail and gets the conversation started!
Gathering Car Basic Details
The way we address the user is customised based on the information we have about the user
Providing assistance with the question to help the user
For example : To find the Car's variant "Check your Car's invoice"
Celebrating the success of completing a section to encourage the users!
Helping user answer technical details about the car like colour of the engine smoke
Using a human tone to persuade the user give more information like Car images
Prioritising the user's comfort by asking the user the convenient time to reach back
A Glimpse of the prototype
To summarize, this is a conversational system that helps user inspect their own Car by :
1. Using informal language to make the technical process seem simpler
2. Persuading the user to answer in a natural way
3. Making the process faster by using conversations which are the most common way people communicate
4. Making the process inclusive of everyone by assisting users to find the right answers
Exploring the Concept in Finance
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So far we saw the use the concept of using conversations in the selling journey to improve the information gathering experience. While looking at more possible places where this concept would flourish we came across the financing process which was also being worked on!
To get a certain loan amount pre approved, we need certain details about the user. Why not user conversations to gather the information in a effective manner?
Here are the final designs for the same :
Next steps
The concept is currently in a prototype state and is being explored in different areas.
The next steps would include developing it and launching it for users to interact with in order to validate its usability and other metrics
Learnings
This was my first time working with a design team at a product company. Also, the problem statement was very interesting so the learnings were immense. Just noting down a few of the important ones :
1. My mentor at OLX inspired me to never think of the most practical and constrained solution at the first attempt. Think wild, think big.
2. Getting feedback is very important for a designer to produce good design. I learnt to be open to feedback from other team members.
3. Communicating your idea is as important as coming up with it. I learnt to always be very articulate and prepared well before presenting your concepts.