Beyond Literacy: Optimizing App Experience for Easy Feature Discovery

Improving the driver-app navigation experience through comprehensive behavioral research on semi-literate bike taxi drivers in India.

THE GOAL
To enhance discoverability of new features on the Rapido driver app by improving accessibility of app’s navigation for low literacy users.
NUMBERS MOVED
Discoverability of new items improved by 263%
FOR WHO?

Bike-Taxi Drivers A.K.A. Captains who use Rapido Captain app to make money by getting rides, finding their way, and handling their schedule.

It is particularly challenging to design solutions for this user base as a lot of captains can’t even read or write and are new to technology. Google refers to such users as the Next Billion Users.

PROJECT TYPE
  • Mobility
  • SaaS
  • Native - Android
  • App Navigation
TIMELINE
  • March 2021 - July 2022
TO IMPROVE
Usability

Increased task success rate

Discoverability

Reduced task completion time

Usefulness

of menu items (based on core jobs to be done)

Comprehension

of menu items for both semi-literate and illiterate users

Credibility

Build and strengthen trust for all users

navigation situation BEFORE THE REVAMP

How does a captain navigate through the app to discover and derive value out of the products that we build?

THE ANSWER

Side Hamburger Navigation

State of affairs of the app’s navigation menubefore the revamp
Captains were not using
features as much as Rapido expected them to

Rapido knew product discoverability was a challenge. Nobody had just ever diverged to question what else could be a part of the problem.

Hypothesis

I had several hypotheses. Some validated, some not.

UNDERSTANDING THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM

To validate the hypotheses, I performed qualitative behavioral research with the captains. I used the think out loud technique in interviews, conducted diary studies and observed captains, aiming to learn:

How captains understand and engage with various items in the menu

What captains think, feel, say and do while using the app

Their mental model and login ritual

TO VALIDATE/UNVALIDATE THE HYPOTHESES

I performed qualitative behavioral research with the captains
.Using the Think Out Loud technique and observational research, I aimed to learn:

Qualitative user interviews and diary studies helped me understand:

CAPTAIN’S MOTIVATIONS

Deeper insights about a captain’s motivations while using various menu sections during different times of the day.

CAPTAIN’S MOTIVATIONS

Deeper insights about a captain’s motivations while using various menu sections during different times of the day.

With the help of above findings, I discovered that the original problem statement needed to be tweaked a bit to fit the context better

RE-DEFINED PROBLEM STATEMENT

How might we help captains navigate the app better while respecting their need to use multiple features during their day:

To help them achieve their goals faster, with minimal error
To improve discoverability of existing and new, undiscovered products

Now that the problem was defined, it was time to diverge to look for the optimal solution.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

How have our competitors and counterparts tried to solve this?

I conducted a competitive analysis on Uber and Ola to see how their partners who were riding bikes were able to navigate through the app.

I conducted a competitive analysis on Uber and Ola to see how their partners who were riding bikes were able to navigate through the app.

Side Navigation
Bottom Navigation

Advances in app navigation and best practices -

Thus, I began solutioning

The first step for this being defining an Information Architecture based on findings from the initial user research and card sorting with internal + external stakeholders to understand information grouping and hierarchy better.

REVISED INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Combining insights from interviews and card sorting, I arrived at the revised IA for the Captain App.

REDEFINED side NAVIGATION SPINE
The outer level had 3 major categories:
Money related
Profile related
Help & Settings related
Followed by associated sub-categories in L2 and L3.
I built, tested and iterated my way forward ~

Working my way through over 20 iterations, with the help of research team,

Whilst doing usability testing of the major variants along the way with over 42 Captains of varied experiences and literacy.

From 6 cities covering the North (Delhi, Chandigarh) and the South (Bangalore, Vijayawada, Mysore and Guntur) of India.

QUESTIONS FOR USABILITY TESTING

Combining insights from interviews and card sorting, I arrived at the revised IA for the Captain App.

Based on insights from the tests and other inputs prior, I designed the final experience.
Features of the newly designed hamburger menu:

Fewer items - thereby driving attention to only what is necessary for the captain.

Breaking up the clutter into 3 main sections - Profile, Earnings and Help

Subtext that clearly articulates what each item comprises of -
considering captains are not exploratory by nature.

UX Copy revised, shaving off the incomprehensible and the excesses.

Clear icons for improved comprehension and accessibility.

old vs REVISED
Over 1,400,000 captains of varied literacy throughout India are now successfully using the new side navigation menu.
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