CAFU Canada

Design of an electric recharge “delivery” app for electric vehicles (EV)

Overview

CLIENT:

CAFU

TEAM:

UX project lead

UI designer

MY ROLE:

UX project lead

DURATION:

3 months

Role

I was the project / UX lead, working alongside UI lead, Tarek Ziane (and Darryn Kings, who took over UIduring the last month while Tarek was on leave) - and working closely with CAFU’s product principal, Aadam, for the first phase, and subsequently working closely with George & Mahesh during the second phase.

CAFU is a leading fuel solution brand based in the UAE that was looking to expand its market & offering to a new region. In the UAE, it is a fuel-delivery service (along with other services being ‘delivered’, such as on-demand car washes, etc.); however, for this new market,  they instead were looking to provide an electric recharge delivery service to electric vehicles (EVs) in the Canadian market. 

Challenge

  • To design a completely new app for a successful business - but in an entirely different region and users (EV users in a Canadian market), using research conducted by an external agency - both user-facing & driver-facing.

Working on this project allowed me to “take over” as temporary UX lead while the CAFU team were restructuring internally - and work closely with their principal product manager as well as the product team.

Methodologies:

I. Meetings & Workshops with the Product Head

A combination of remote & in-person meetings were conducted with the product head to understand the current UAE fuel-delivery journey, so that we could create a similar (yet tailored) version of the Canada electric recharge delivery journey. During this process, we:

  • Agreed upon communication and collaboration strategies

  • Became aware of business goals and product vision

  • Understood the brand guidelines

  • Established success criteria and project goals to measure success

  • Discussed assumptions to validate and improve all users journeys

  • Understood limitations & current pain points with the current UAE app

II. Research & Competitive Analysis

Because there was a clear plan in place, we did a lighter version of competitive analysis - where we looked at EV apps in general, and tried to pinpoint the positives for inspiration, as well as the negatives to avoid (for both UX & UI).

And once the external Canadian marketing agency completed their own research, we analyzed their results for insights that would help us with our design, such including food app-like & social media-like flows, which would help the app become more familiar to the users.

III. User Flows - Existing & New

Once we completed the discovery phase, we moved onto creating user flows in a swimlane diagram format.

We had a flow for first-time users, and of course, a more condensed (yet personalised) flow for existing users. The aim of the business was to make it as frictionless as possible, while still being able to collect user information.

IV. Wireframes & UI

We began working in 2-week “sprints” - completing batches as we went along. We started with low-fidelity UX wireframes, and once these were approved, we moved on to high-fidelity UI.

We designed screens for both the user and the pilot (driver) - though the pilot was mostly completed in UI, with a few UX tweaks (CAFU decided that the pilots should have near-identical flows to the current CAFU UAE app).

Example of the user app screens - converted from my low-fidelity UX “sketches” to high-fidelity screens by our UI designer, after discussing the vision

Example of the pilot app screens - converted from my low-fidelity UX “sketches” to high-fidelity screens by our UI designer

Handover to CAFU product team

In the midst of our work, a new head of product design was hired. We onboarded him of all the work which took place (and was still taking place). We aligned daily, and the new product design head slowly began taking over the project as it came to an end. Our work was done!

In the end, we handed over:

  1. User app UX screens, which covered signing up, creating a vehicle profile, personal profile, placing an order, and tracking an order.

  2. Pilot app UI screens, which had the same flows as the CAFU UAE pilot app - but modified to EV.

Final Thoughts

Truly one of my favorite UX experiences to date! The CAFU team were so professional & cooperative with our daily standups, and I learned so much from their head of product.

I would have loved to have personally seen this project through to completion, but I did my role as “temporary lead” and handed it off as I knew I would. :)

Exciting news - they did eventually go live!