My Concept - How it started

I was working as an intern:

I was participating in an internship program when this idea came to me. We were assigned to solve a pressing problem we faced recently using a digital solution, and I had ordered a Wilson basketball from AliExpress as I wanted to pick up a new hobby, but then it took forever (a month) to arrive in Nigeria, and then when I got a call from the customs official that it had arrived, I immediately rushed there. After getting to the customs office they told me to go back and bring some more files and documents before the ball can be released and this took so much of my time having to figure out the files myself and then the back and forth, and I also paid extra again. After all this, I decided shipping items might not be for me.

There should be something out there:

Yet again, i needed to use other delivery brands like DHL and FedEx, but they were overpriced for me, and the mobile app was just not it UI and UX wise.

Starting the journey:

Decided to delve deeper and start a case study on this problem. Starting with, what is the age range of people who order online? Are they tech-savvy or just getting by? How can I leverage these insights and do something useful for this sector? I started with quantitative research, trying to figure out what buyers actually wanted.

I Surveyed 15 people altogether for this research

Problem Statements:

“I wish I had known the amount of time it would take for my goods to arrive at my location, and even though customs was easy to deal with, I would still prefer to use private logistics, but they are quite expensive.” — Taken from a user interview.

“I don't like dealing with human interactions too much because humans are subjective; I'd prefer an automated delivery process for my goods and also to be able to track my goods in real-time.” — Taken from a user interview.

I did a survey asking how many times people tend to ship items on an average

Understanding the problem—

After the above research was conducted, I found some eye-opening challenges. Problems most of the users mentioned are:

• Late delivery packages
• No real-time tracking of goods' location
• Overcharges
• mistakes in the delivery invoice
• poorly executed pricing agreement and discounts application
• damaged goods
• rates increase without a detailed understanding of why they increased - ( surcharges). the fuel surcharge is a constantly fluctuating surcharge as oil price changes from time to time so for most shippers, discounts on fuel are non-negotiable so reducing the other line item expenses will result in a lower cost for customers

Product Vision and solution—

From these findings I decided from a B2C perspective and designed what features would make this app a success:

• create a subscription-based plan
• enable users to choose who they want as their carrier/picker
• shipping insurance immediately after you subscribe
• integrated automatic shipping labels
• Custom clearance help
• Easily integrate with the calendar so it notifies them of every journey their shipments take
• Automated shipping labels
• Custom calculator in the platform to help users calculate duties and tariffs based on shipment weights, countries, and rest.

Information Architecture:

Defining MVP key screens—

Using the simple sitemap above, I decided to design for the following key user stories:

• Subscribe to a plan: Users after login can subscribe to a plan to start shipping