Areas : Human computer interaction , Smart wearable , haptic Feedback , Voice assistance , User experience , Haptic interface , gesture based interactions.

Smart wearable for food delivery associates

The E-commerce market in India will reach US$200 billion by 2026. The online daily orders will reach 2 million per day. In this online delivery economy, food delivery startups have bitten big chunks from venture capital investors, more than 700 million dollars. In every food order deliver, the aggregators/delivery company has a margin of 6-7 % . These figures are fascinating, and the backbone for these powerful figures are the enablers, the delivery associates. Who acts as the first layer of interface between the customers and company? These projects investigate the day to day job of food delivery associates in Gandhinagar, Gujarat and applied design thinking to approach the solutions.

Primary research

To understand more about the delivery associates, I planned to engage with them on the professional.

I began by approaching the delivery associates at a tea stall where they usually hang out during their free time, while they wait for new tasks. Once they were familiar with me, I accompanied a few of them for pickups and deliveries, sitting on the backseat of their bike.

I shadowed a few delivery boys for a week and a half. Once the shadowing process was over,

I thought of immersing myself in the activity, experience the day to day lifestyle of delivery associates. Hence,

I enrolled myself in the Delivery associate program

( picture me while working as a delievery boy in the

right ) at Swiggy, I did a part-time job for 1 week as a delivery associate. while shadowing and immersion, I observed, interviewed and transcribed my thoughts at the end of the day.

Observations/shadowing/immersion

The moment of clarity

The strike of clarity into me at this moment when, me and the delivery associate hit the cart in front of our bike, on our way to deliver a food order, the delivery associate practicing

the normative action of using his left hand to navigate the map on his mobile phone.

We crashed.

Research Analysis

" The Clarity "

The accident claimed a deeper rooted inquiry, in the process of food delivery and the working condition of the delivery associates.

The decision of initiating a design research on

delivery associate got an approval.

Design Philosophy

Whenever the number of functions and required operations exceeds the number of controls , the

design becomes arbitrary, unnatural and compli-

cated. The same technology that simplifies life by

providing ,move functions in the each device also

complicates life by making the device harder to

learn,harder to use.

- Don Norman

What do I want to achieve in the design ?

Good Mappings : Single controls have single functions. Natural things between the controls and the things controlled.

Good Feedback : User information about what action has actually been done, what result has been accomplished.

Multi- tasking : Multimodality

Concept

Haptic assistance & Interaction

Voice assistance

Gesture based Interaction

Multimodal smart wearable band for delivery boys . The wearable assists their daily

jobs with features of voice assistant, gesture recognition, Haptic feedback incompletion of task and identies range(in distance) of incoming task.

In present scenario all food delivery comapnies launch

their products as an app to be installed in the smart phones .Whereas smart phone being a perosnal device ,restricts the deliverys boys to perform other task in their smart phone.

“ Personal device used for professional service ”

Through research it has been established that smart phone doesn't qualify for a user friendly

device for the delivery day to day buisness , since it has shortcomings of usage while riding

a two-wheeler.

Hence this smart band acts a mediator between the user and the smart phone , notifying

the user about his daily tasks in the job.