M.
Ford | Boro
Service concept for Ford
Overview
The Challenge
Ford set up an open-ended challenge for the students at TUDelft to explore what the future of a handyman that owned a Ford Transit (Light Commercial Vehicle) would look like.
Solution
Boro is a conceptual service design project that aims to create a seamless and connected network of moving tools that can make the handyman's job more efficient and less expensive. It acts as an end-end service that allows handymen to plan their jobs, rent tools, maintain them and also send invoices.
Roles + Responsibilities
End-to-end research to design, with more ownership of conceptualization and prototyping.
Timeline & Team - Year
6 months | 2 members - 2021
Type
Service design, digital product design, mobile application
Tools
Research through design
Speculative design
Prototyping
Wireframing
Storytelling
Trend analysis
Wizard of oz
Roleplaying
3D Printing
Adobe Suite (Illustrator, Premier Pro, After Effects)
Cinema 4D
Head straight to the final concept:
Problem Statement
The independent handyman we spoke to mentioned that rented tools are especially needed, fast, when one of his own tools breaks down. Now, he often has to wait until he can pick up the tool that broke. Waiting around for tools to be picked can get very expensive, inefficient time-wise.
Context
The Ford Transit is a family of light commercial vehicles manufactured by the Ford Motor Company, primarily as cargo vans. Handymen often use a Ford Transit as their work vehicle. The handymen are generally proud owners of this vehicle and often make customizations to the van to better suit their work.
Ford came with the challenge to explore and create potential future concepts around the Ford Transit vehicle that could benefit the handymen.
< A Ford Transit van
In a jist, we decided to focus on how the tools used by handymen could work with the Ford Transit to facilitate the concept of a shared resource. The Ford Transit will be key to the connected system of tracking, monitoring and maintaining tools, acting as a mobile agent and in turn helping find the nearest tool to a fellow handyman.
Research through Design
This project did not have a traditional user research method. Since the goal was to explore futuristic concepts, a "research through design" methodology was followed. This meant working with less research data and more speculative ideas as a means to reach the future concept.
The initial phases included plenty of speculative design concepts in order to push the limits of what a handyman's future world could like. Small and quick prototypes were built and tested using roleplaying and wizard of oz techniques initially with peers and later with users.
Concept exploration..
It included trend analysis, exploring future and current themes of artificial intelligence, responsible ai, future work places, shared spaces, etc. Some days were also spent exploring tools that could best help prototype the concept during the Covid pandemic.
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Prototyping and testing
Most prototypes were low fidelity and involved plenty of wizard of ozing and roleplaying to create the intended experience. Intials prototypes were largely tested with peers in order to allow room for creative feedback.
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Towards final concept
After plenty of exploration, we decided to move towards the idea of resource and tool sharing. The idea started off with having moving libraries as trucks, in order to allow more mobility for the tools.
We, later on, decided to remove the idea of moving libraries as we discovered that there are plenty of existing warehouses that can house the tools. Moreover, moving libraries may become cumbersome in the small streets of the cities in the Netherlands.
We started with prototyping different digital and physical parts/scenarios of the entire service concept. Since it was the start of the pandemic lockdown, we had to resort to online testing. Before the final concept was decided, we validated our ideas with two handymen.
Prototype videos
Prototyping for this project included adding some speculative elements and breaking some of the typical UI patterns. The below videos illustrate some parts of the interface based on the context/situation.
Reserving Tool Modules :
When a handyman starts a new job, the system estimates and recommends how many and what tool modules they might need for the job. The handyman can choose to reserve and pick up these tools if needed.
Picking up a Tool Module :
The handyman will arrive at a warehouse that stores these modules and can pick up the box on their own. The user interface will provide the access code and location of the tool module.
Since we were constrained by the pandemic, we decided to build the experience on cinema 4D to illustrate how the module pickup would work.
Tool diagnostics :
The tools are tracked for usage in order to maintain them in good shape. It would ensure handymen don't have to deal with broken or inefficient tools while at a work site which would delay their progress for the day.
Missing Tool information:
Missing or losing tools at a work site was a major concern for handymen. Informing a handyman that a tool might be missing from their van was essential to avoid a personal loss to the handyman and ensuring tool modules that were borrowed weren't lost too.
Borrowing from a fellow handyman:
A pickup site might not be the easiest way for a handyman to pick up a tool in case of an urgent deadline. The service allows for tools to be shared between handymen to make sure no tools sit idle for long and at the same time can satisfy a fellow handyman's unexpected need. The handyman can search for a specific tool to see if there is any nearby.
Encouraging handymen to rent their tool:
Based on tool usage data and invoice/job information, the system encourages handymen to make their tools available for others to rent with the incentive of a small pay.
Final Concept and Design
The final design and exhibition needed to be online, so we decided to make explain our concept through the power of storytelling by using storylines or scenarios that would explore all the features of the concept.
We used Figma to build the different digital touch points in the design, the physical interaction and touch points were created in Cinema 4D. The storyline and detailed interactions in the concept are explained through the Notion page.
Head over to the notion page here to get the entire experience:
Reflections
This project entailed several new challenges, starting from the design methodology, prototyping and the lockdown from the pandemic.
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"Research through design" methodology turned out extremely challenging to get accustomed to as someone who had previously always used traditional research and design methods. It was hard to imagine user needs or problems and adapt to the mindset of speculating future scenarios with minimal knowledge of the users and the context.
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The pandemic's start meant less access to resources and materials, peers, and users. Moving from a physical to a fully digital space for a project that required in-person interaction and prototyping meant adapting quickly to rethinking concepts and methods of validating them.