Transparency at Truck Supply & Demand in India

Using existing GPS devices on the vehicle, aiming to address the lack of transparency in the supply and demand of the truck.

Mentors:

Vik Parth (Researcher - Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Anne Hudson (Researcher - Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Teammates:

Maharshi Solanki - IoT Engineer

Nisarg Shah - Software Engineer

Tushar Kukreja - User Research

My Role:

UX Designer

Product Strategist

Deliverables:

A UX mockup for both the stakeholders involved in the project through the navigable Figma prototype.

Time Period:

January 2020 [6 Days - Full time]

@ MIT India Initiative 2020, Mumbai

Background

In India, domestic goods transportation is dominant through trucks in roadways (~65%), and the trucking sector is majorly unorganized.

Ideation

1. Potential Stakeholders in the Indian domestic goods transportation industry

2. Movement of goods and concerns

3. Truck drivers and their pain points

Problem Statement

As the truck owners are highly distributed and an average owner owns less than 5 trucks, the availability of the trucks isn't visible to the right stakeholders like Industries/ Contractors/ Agents at the required time.

Opportunity

The Indian government has mandated the use of certified GPS device - Automotive Industry Standard (AIS) 140 for all the OEM and aftermarket commercial and public utility vehicles. Every 2 years fitness certification test is to be done for the commercial vehicle and without the AIS-140 GPS tracking device, fitness certification won’t be provided for the vehicle.

As a standard, the AIS 140 device contains 4 digital & 2 analog ports, out of which 2 digital ports generally remain unused.

Current Process

Proposed Process

Proposed Solution

Physical Switch in Truck Driver's cabin

A physical switch added to the truck's dashboard will be connected to the existing AIS-140 GPS tracking device digital input port so that existing technology available in the truck is utilized.

In addition to the existing GPS data which is shared with the truck owner, the data from the digital input port (reg. availability of the truck) is also shared with the truck owner through this mobile app.

Purpose: When the driver switches it on, means he is ready to take a load, and only after that do we show that the truck is available for load, to the agents in that particular region.

Similar to Uber, the truck driver's preference is received from the switch and shared with the relevant stakeholders.

Truck Owners - Mobile Application UX Design