February 2018

CONCEPT
FILE

By:
Conan Spithoven
Petar Kesic
Vilayat Kleer
Kimberley de Jong
Haris Spahija
Mercury Design
TLE 3 - 4
 02
Table of Contents
0. Preface
1. Introduction
2. Design Casus
3. Research
4. Brainstorm
5. Development Process
6. Development Enviorment
7. Design Guide
8. Visualisation
9. Documentation
10. Special Thanks
 03
0. Preface
Hello, I am your FedEx Assistant.

I am here to assist you with sending your international packages. My creators,

Haris, Conan, Petar, Vilayat and Kimberley, have researched the FedEx customer
base and gathered data on their troubles. They quickly found out customers have
the most trouble with filling out international adresses. And so, they created me.

But how will I, an Artificial Intelligence application, help you, you wonder? Well..
This is what my process looks like.

Instead of searching the internet or ask friends for clues on how to send an
international package, I will be your guideline. All you need to do is say hi and I
will take care of the rest.

Whom is the package receiver? Your brother? Oh, he lives in New York America,
correct? What is it you're sending? Your grandmother's favorite vase? So this
package is fragile. I will have your label printed and your bank account billed
automatically.

But that's not where my process ends. You'll be able to easily track your package
from the moment you give me the order of printing the label. And what of the
future, you might wonder? My creators have thought of that, too.

Initially, you still have to manually walk to the post office to send your package off
into the world. But not for long. In the future, package delivery might be taken
over by drones. At that point, I will be able to prepare your delivery with the
information you provide. I will have a drone with the correct box, labeled, sent
your way. All you need to do is deposit your item into the box and I will take care
of the rest.

No more worries for the customer, not with my help.

Your FedEx Assistant, at your service.
 04
Introduction
“How can we rethink package delivery in cities using
AI?”
Our case owner for this project is FedEx. FedEx main job is to deliver packages
from A to B. This ranges from sending and receiving packages, to everything in
between: hubs, logistics, measuring the size of a package, etc. Challenges to
overcome in this process involve: heavy traffic, availability of the receiver at pick-
up/delivery time and location, the 'hand-shake' (signature replacement?) delivery
confirmation, and the key word on flexibility: re-routing the delivery 'on the fly'.

Recently, there have been a lot of developments in the field of artificial

intelligence: new machine learning techniques, cheaper hardware, more sensors,
more data available, and ready-to-use machine learning APIs. This offers new
possibilities for package delivery. Different data sets can be combined to each
other, e.g. traffic, weather, location of receiver, preferences
of receiver, mood of the receiver, etc, and new patterns can be learned.

Technological developments make many new solutions possible, but it is

important to keep in mind that any solution created should take context of use
and user experience into account. Technology and AI are enablers: always keep
an eye on the value that a solution creates for the customer.
 05
Design Casus
As a group you will create a solution for a non-specific problem in an
Urban Environment. Your solution must use a form of Artifical Intelligence
to solve your problem casus. There are no restrictions in the usage of a
specific AI, including the development environment. The project is split in
two major phases:
- Research Phase (est. 4 sprints)
- Development Phase (est 4. sprints)

At the end of each phases there will be a presentation to show the current
progress of your project. These presentations offer a feedback moment
from FedEx themselves to steer your project into the right way or form new
questions abouts your concept.

Group
During the project a team will be formed consisting out of 5 people. Each
individual gets assigned a specific role during this project when it comes
to development and research. The following roles are:

- Researching Technologist
- Designing Technologist
 06
Research
During our research we started to look at possible
idea’s for our concept. We created a wall of inspiration
with different possible problems that we could solve,
limitations and concepts that have been made before.

To validate the functionality and benefits of our

concept we underwent a couple of interviews and user
tests. By faking an AI we could see that there was a
huge possibility to decrease the complexity and
reduce the time it takes to send a package.

The main goal of our user tests was to see the viability
and the need for such a concept. We also studied what
the user expects from and AI and their natural train of
thought when it comes to sending a package. This
train of thought has been converted into a system flow
the user would have with our application.

The interviews, user tests and results can be found in

the research document that can be found here:
https://goo.gl/qH5KMf
 07
Brainstorm
At the start of the concept we had multiple Brainstorm
sessions to develop our initial concept. We used
multiple methods to brainstorm, including the usage of
a wall of inspiration and Solution Sketches for multiple
concepts. We gathered all the data we could find
about our topic and stuck them to a wall of inspiration.
This wall of inspiration formed our basis for the first
couple of brainstorm sessions.

Out of those brainstorm sessions we were able to form a design challenge: How
might we reduce fear on package delivery among small urban FedEx
customers? By creating a design challenge we were able to narrow down our
concept by including more specific problems related to our design challenge. Also
we were able to form a target audience that we would be solving things for. Based
on our design challenge we picked a concept by creating each an individual
concept.
 08
Solution Sketch

This method of creating small concepts is called Solution Sketching. The goal of
Solution Sketching is not only to form a concept, but also to see what everyone’s
thought is on solving our design challenge.

The result of our brainstorm sessions at the start of the concept was a platform,
powered by an AI, that would assist the user in sending a package, maintaining
contact with FedEx and their package.
 09
Development
Process
We used different methods during our development.
The main methods we used were SCRUM, Sprint and AI
Driven Design. Our development of the concept was
distributed over a period of 8 weeks, 4 of those weeks
were concepting and researching and other 4 were
mainly focused around user testing and developing
the actual product. Each sprint we would create an
environment on basecamp and treated as a separate
entity. This method is the SCRUM method.

During these processes we would find new user stories

and turn them into feasible items for in our backlog.
This backlog had a live one to one reference with
Trello for the ease of the team.

For deciding if a user story was feasible one would

pretend to make an AI capable of fulfilling the tasks of
a specific user story by an AI. An example would be the
understanding of basic English speech. How would we
find variables in the things a person says? By saying
that an AI would understand it one could form an
interface around the non-existing program. This way
an interface and the UX could be designed before
there would be an actual functioning program. The
only downside of this method is during the
development of your concept. One might run into flaws
of the capabilities of the AI. More information about
this method van be found at https://algorithms.design
 10
Development
Environment
From the results that we did during our first user tests, desk research and
interviews we were able to form a development environment for our
concept:

- An AI is fairly new to people, so easy accessibility is required.

- FedEx is an international, so multiple languages should be supported.

- Consumers often don’t understand the complexity of package delivery

but still want to know everything about their package, so a perfect balance
between data and visuals is required.

- A consumer often does not know everything about the destination of

their package when sending a package, so an autocomplete should be
added.

To cover all of these requirements of our development environment we

decided it was best to create an application for a smartphone(easy
accessibility), that works off the users data (autcomplete), guides a user
trough the process of receiving or giving information about a package
(powered by an AI), and should have multiple language support to cover
the size of FedEx’ customers.
 11
Design Guide
All of the requirements for our concept and product are stored in a backlog. This is
updated daily and keeps track of the time required for the realization of a specific
user story. This time is estimated on the assumptions that were made during
SCRUM-poker. (The user stories are shown in Dutch due to language limitations. An
English version has not been created yet. 1-7-2018)
 12
Trello
These user stories were created in a Trello board and tracked with a burndown
chart. Link to Trello board can be found here: https://trello.com/b/M2ih7l0I

Each card represents a user story or functional requirement. They are separated in 4
different categories. No Action – This represents the entire backlog. Planned – This
represents user stories that are upcoming or are on hold due limitations of the
current prototype. Doing – These user stories are currently in their realization phase.
Done – Once a user story or functional requirement has a definition of done it can be
dragged to this section.
A burndown chart is created with the implemented functionality and add-ons from
Trello. This way a progression can be shown of the development from our concept.
 13
Burndown Chart
A burndown chart is created with the implemented functionality and add-ons from
Trello. This way a progression can be shown of the development from our concept.
 14
Research
Visualisation
For creating a universal vision about the looks of our application
we decided to create both “low-fidelity” wireframes, “high-
fidelity” wireframes and a rapid prototype. Both low-fidelity and
high-fidelity wireframes have been created with comments. The
low-fidelity wireframes can be seen here:

The high-fidelity wireframes are seen here and can also be tested with the
following link using figma: https://goo.gl/2BWh8n
 15
Testing Phase
Because the AI lacked intelligence and functionality we were
forced to test our concept by impersonating the AI. To create a
visual for our team how we would handle this user test we made a
so called “Rough-Sketch”. A rough-sketch is supposed to be a
picture that every one would understand and can hung up on a
wall during a sprint as an end goal. You create a storyboard
for your test and use this as a guideline for your rapid prototype
test.

Complete user tests are documented and can be read in our

Testing paper. Some visualizations are show here:
 16
03

Solution Sketch

This simple clickstream showed the emotion and frustration a user has during the
usage of our prototype. All of these user tests are documented in a complete
Customer Journey and Empathy Map.
 Empathy Map

03
17
An Empathy Map shows how a customer might feel about certain topics and what
topics they might relate when they see or hear about our product. This Empathy
Map forms a basis for the creation of a persona that will be used for your Customer
Journey.

Customer Journey
The customer journey shows a total of 4 phases for our concept with each having
“simplified” actions on the top (pink). These actions consist of multiple actions a
user must do or requires to fill out in order for the system to work (blue). Based on
those actions you reflect with the usage of your Empathy Map. This way an Emotion
Line can be created to see where the flaws of your system might be (yellow). The
higher the line, the more positive a user is during the action phases. A complete
explanation about the feelings of a user is done in red. The red cards show the
individual pain points a user might have during a specific pain point.
Customer Journey

18
03
Customer Journey

19
03
Customer Journey

20
03
Customer Journey

21
03
Customer Journey

22
03
Customer Journey

23
03
24
 25
Documentation
Tools:
SCRUM – Agile framework for managing software
development. Read more https://www.scrum.org/

DialogFlow – AI framework by google for simplifying the usage

of an AI. Read more https://dialogflow.com/

Basecamp – Development environment for sharing files and

progress. Read more https://basecamp.com/

Figma – Free wireframe software for creating low and high

fidelity wireframes. Read more https://www.figma.com

Trello – Free and simplified project management. Read more

https://trello.com

AI centered Design – Method to create a UX with an AI. Read

more https://algorithms.design
 26
Special Thanks
Special thanks to the following people:
Ruben Bos (UX - Teacher)
Nathalie Stembert (UX - Teacher)
Maaike Harbers (Research – Teacher)
Jurgen van Raak (UX/Entrepreneur – Teacher)
Roel Hooiring (Entrepreneur Teacher)
Jan van der Horst (Pitching Teacher)
Rob (UX Teacher/Design Teacher)
Dieuwertje Schuur (UX Teacher/Design Teacher)
Emiel Bakker (Teacher / Social Media Advertising)

Jonathan Liu (DialogFlow Support)

Krishna (DialogFlow Support)

Lars Broer (Project Management)

Bernardo van de Schepop (FedEx)

Thomas van Eenbergen (FedEx)
Richard de Vos (FedEx)

Geoffrey Westbroek (UX Tester)

Orlando Duivestein (UX Tester)
Jersson Pires (UX Tester)
And everyone else that helped us test our prototypes and answer our
interviews/polls!

To the following companies for having us:

RaboBank Nederland
Awkward
FedEx
Hogeschool Rotterdam

The team:
Conan Spithoven
Vilayat Kleer
Petar Kesic
Kimberley de Jong
Haris Spahija