CHAMA

Chama is a technology company that provide online cooking gas ordering and delivery platform based in Amsterdam and Sao Paulo. Each month Brazilians run out of their cooking gas, and go through a repetitive slow and problematic re-ordering process. The mission isn’t only to solve this issue by providing Brazilian consumers with a faster, easier and safer way to get the gas but also to help resellers to sell more product in a more efficient way.

My Role

I worked in close collaboration with the lead designer, researchers and development team located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We use the Agile methodologies for our product development process. While the whole product, BI and management team work in the Netherlands the other half of the company which is composed of researchers, customer service and marketing are located in Sao Paulo, Brazil to be closer to the market. While we did run into issues during our international collaboration, having a diverse team proved to be beneficial in providing us with a more open perspective. 

In this case study I would like to go from the first launch of products to the market. Followed by the second phase in which we developed from research, key learnings and insights gained from the first period. After which I will show the outcome of the project at the end of the case study.

• UI design (User interface for Web and Mobile)

• UX design (Research, improve and provide better experience)

• User research (Field observation, interviews)

• Prototype (Flow and interactions for user testing and development)

• Testing (Before implementation)

• Competitive research

Tools

• Figma

• Sketch

• Principle/ Framer

• Zeplin

• Triple Track Agile

• User Research

Problem and Context

As mentioned in the beginning, the process of buying and selling cooking gas in Brazil can be quite painful for consumers. The reseller market is also very competitive. Tools that are available in market don’t fulfil all reseller needs ,therefore, they need to purchase and switch between tools during the working hour which is complicated and frustrating for them. In term of logistics, there is no tool to support this so drivers need to deliver lot of orders each day through calls or Whatsapp messenger which are hard for them to manage and work efficiently.

Chama provided 3 products for a consumer, a reseller and a driver. The mission is to revolt the system of gas ordering process. My team has a focus on the B2B market and logistic side which compose of two main products . First one is Partner portal which made for resellers to sell their products and control everything including orders, tracking, store detail, driver management and everything. Another one is Driver App for drivers to deliver gas to customers in the fastest and smartest way possible.

Project Goals

• Improve the whole logistic quality by making it better, faster and easier

• Provide the best user experience with both products

• Growth of the customer base ( resellers and drivers )

• Increase number of orders

• Improve order success rate

Design Process

I worked within the Triple Track Agile Process which composes of two main parts; problem and solution scope. In the solution scope , it will start with the discovery phase then follow by the delivery phase. My work will start from the discovery phase which is after receiving the opportunity list from the researcher and data scientist from the first phase.

In the discovery phase we worked together with product owner, strategists, researchers and head of product. The purpose of the Discovery phase is to find the best solution for user and business needs and minimise risks before proceeding to the delivery phase which is to move the solution to the production stage.

Getting to know our users

RESELLER PERSONA

Driver persona

old Customer journey map

Early Discovery

Customer insights

These are the key insights that defined the launch the latest version of the product:

THE FIRST LAUNCHED

PARTNER PORTAL & DRIVER APP

Chama first introduced Partner Portal and Driver app to a reseller with all necessary features that are required in the gas ordering process from the first to the final step. Together with a consumer application, Partner Portal gives resellers a fair market to sell their product and increase their awareness to consumers. A consumer can order gas in a few clicks in the app and  it will be sent to Partner Portal immediately. Then the reseller can assign this to his driver and he could start delivery right away with a navigation tool in the Driver App.

SECOND PHASE DISCOVERY

After the products were launched, we kept a close eye and looked for opportunities to make them better. Then we went back to the problem scope, starting from researching phase to get key learnings and insights from our users before proceeding to the discovery phase. We did some field observations and interviews to understand our users behaviour and struggles that they face in their daily lives.

OPPORTUNITIES

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the New Partner Portal & Driver app

1. Design System

Before going over the new features it’s important to mention the new design system which is at the heart of our products. We used to have a library for each product which made it difficult to maintain consistency. These libraries had some legibility issues due to the low recognition of text which was influenced by the type size and contrast.

This key idea of the design system is to have small and independent parts which can be combined into larger molecular structures. Together it defines our design patterns including typography, colours, icons, spacing, navigation and information architecture across all three applications. Not only does this help guide designers maintain brand alignment, it also makes the implementation process easier for the development team thanks to the modular nature of the design system.

2. Introducing phone orders

The Partner Portal now allows resellers to add orders received from outside of Chama’s tools into the system. This enables resellers to track and manage all of their orders in our tools, making our Partner Portal a true one-stop-shop tool for resellers.

3. Full visibility of driver and delivery process

In order to have the full visibility of all drivers and delivery processes it’s crucial to not only improve the Tracking page feature but to have all drivers on both platforms; Partner Portal and Driver app. We used the following approaches to accomplish this goal:

 3.1 MAKING DRIVER REGISTRATION MUCH EASIER

We simplified the registration process by removing confusing and redundant fields and instead asked resellers to only provide the necessary information of new drivers. This simple change significantly sped up and lowered the bar for registration.

3.2 Brand new tracking page

We provided a driver list panel as a default state of the page. Resellers can either search for a driver on a map or choose one right from the panel. This gives them all necessary information about a driver. Moreover, they now can manage their driver’s product, ongoing orders and online/offline status from here.

4. Order history page

It has been difficult for our resellers to generate reports using the old Partner Portal, to combat this problem we have added an order history page that can be accessed from the order page or separately via the menu. This page provides filters, search tools and a date picker to make the searching experience quick and easy and allows users to save their results as an Excel file.

5. Multiple ways to manage stores

Store and service area management is the feature resellers use at least 10 times per day everyday to manage the product and opening hours. We have moved all the service areas to be in a single page together with product, price and opening hours. This way they can manage everything faster and easier while having a store selector always visible on the top navigation bar.

6. Increase the success rate

6.1 Communication is key

We use a popup dialog to inform resellers every time we launch new features when they log into the Portal. Moreover, with the use of Intercom articles, they can learn more about how to use these new features at any time.

6.2 Educate our users

Ease of learning is one of the most important things for users. We know that most drivers aren’t tech savvy and often have problems using smart devices. Therefore, we provide Training materials that explain everything that they need to know in order to use our app and ones for resellers as well.  This material can be accessed at any time from both tools.

6.3 Guide when the problems occur

Most of the time when issues occur, drivers don’t know what to do and this interrupts the whole delivery process. We provide the Troubleshoot feature with a step by step guide to help them solve the issue in the easiest and fastest way possible.

The Impact

Positive results and STILL ON GOING

The new design of Partner Portal and Driver app had a positive impact on the whole logistic process, success rate and order volume. However, there are still many voids and opportunity to bring this to another level. I believe this to be an evolutional change that will change the behaviour of the market over a longer period of time. Over a year we have changed these (for confidentiality reasons I have omitted the actual values for these metrics)

• Average delivery time decreased by 41%

• Success rate increased up TO 90-100%

• ORDER VOLUME INCREASE by 72%

• a number of user (reseller) increased by 93%

• a number of user (Driver) increased by 560%