© 2023 AARDesign. All rights reserved.
RFID and barcode scan tool for Mexican highway tolls
Year: 2017
My role: UX/UI designer
Company: This project was developed in Indra Software Labs for Libramiento Elevado de Puebla company.
Team: This project was developed by a small team of a back-end developer, a fron-end developer and me. As a designer, I worked more closely to the fron-end developer, with whom the interactions were good and smooth.
Company Libramiento Elevado de Puebla, dedicated, among other activities, to the management of highways in the region of Puebla, Mexico, found a problem with the efficiency of its highway tolls. Citizens had repeatedly complained about the endless traffic jams around the toll booths, and workers had reported the poor condition of work tools several times in the last years.
To solve this problem, the company decided to update their technology and give each toll technician a portable device with a dedicated software to scan the different type of codes. Then our team came in to design and develop the software in the most simple, intuitive and efficient way possible.
1. The discovery : familiarization with the device and the users, and creation of User Personas to set their needs and pains.
2. Definition of the application : creation of the user journey and mock ups.
3. The solution : design of the final screens of the application.
First thing to do was to get familiarized with the specific device to be used, its dimensions and resolution, and the operative system to be used.
The device was PDA with an accessory gun case that speeded up the scanning. It included both barcode scanner and RFID reader, both systems used in Puebla’s highway tolls. The os used by the device was Android 5.1, even if it was not the latest one, it meant a huge progress for them.
One of the main goals of the discovery was to know better the users, their characteristics, limitations. This would help us understand what problems they encounter and how could we help them.
In order to do that, we gather some data about the target workers and the list of workers’ general reports and complaints, and created a user persona.
The creation of the company worker user persona helped us clarifying the user problems and needs were:
Users need a single tool which reads both types of codes used
Users need a resilient device tool that doesn´t break and back ups
Users need an agile tool that can scan more codes in less time
Users need to be able to work out of the shelter and move along the road
We also needed to reflect on the age of the user, he is not a digital native, and probably won’t be super confortable using digital devices, so it is important to make it easy and light for them.
Together with the front-end developer we designed the user flow considering the user access to the application and all the steps to read and send a code, inlcuding the scan errors and access requests errors that might happen, for any of either code systems.
Once the user journey was clear and all the actions and steps were defined I could identify each screen to design. Then I created low-fi mockups for both code reading user stories, barcode and RFID, so we could validate them with the developers.
Once the mockups were validated I started creating the UI of the application. By using Libramiento Elevado de Puebla’s brand colors and typography and the princpiles of flat design, I created some illustrations and the final screens of the project, including the welcome screen and the log in and log out screens this time.
I also created an interactive prototype of the application to define some animations and transitions in the interactions. Thanks to the company, who sent us a device, we could try the live prototype, and later the coded app, in the one to be the PDA used.
Although it was not possible to test the design directly with the users, some good feedback was returned by the company some time after the solution was implemented. As a result, it could be concluded that the project improved the performance of the company and the workers conditions and satisfaction.
© 2023 AARDesign. All rights reserved.