Package Tracker – UX

The Package Tracker app was conceived—ground up—from the simple premise of; everyone is too busy to keep track of our online orders. With the decline of the brick and mortar store, we are consistently trying to stay on top of our orders. It’s only when our bank balance reflects our shopping addiction do we realize packages are lost or haven’t arrived on time.

Deliverables:

• Wireframes
• Mockups
• Prototype

My Role:

User Experience designer

Discover

After an exhaustive search for websites and apps that allow for tracking, what I found was quite interesting. Similar to research on PIYH, I found there were apps for each company, but nothing that combined couriers. On websites, they had the ability to search either/or but you couldn’t keep your numbers together. If you had 5 tracking numbers you’d have to enter each one separately each time you wanted to check on them. On apps, you were limited to specific couriers. You would need to have several apps taking up precious phone storage.

Define

Pain point: Consumer frustration of keeping track of multiple packages across multiple curriers, from multiple orders.

MVP Parameters:

• Three main couriers
• Ability to store tracking numbers
• Track now feature

Future State:

• In-app status updates on individual packages

Design/Prototype/Build

Using ionic.io I created the prototype to beta test with potential users. After extensive rounds of testing, I came to the conclusion that it was valid for development. Currently under development as iOS & Android and needs to be a native app for the best consumer experience.

Prototype Link

Challenges & Takeaways

Like most projects the biggest challenge is data. Data that a company feels is proprietary when in fact it is owned by the consumer. We pay for tracking numbers so that data should not be hard for the consumer to find and for a consumer-oriented app to serve up for free. It would be different if there was a PHI factor but even the courier company has no control over the data they show if a user has the correct string of numbers. This fact made the MVP state more than likely the final state until companies open their data for shipped/in-transit/delivered status’.