Land Rover – Redesigning a social off roading app
Introduction
The Land Rover – Ardhi app is a mobile app that allows off-roaders to plan, track, and share their adventures. The previous version was rich in features, but users found it overwhelming and hard to navigate. Off-roading can be done in many different places in the world, but the main focus for Ardhi is the Middle Eastern countries.
Final screens for the Land Rover Ardhi app.
Challenges
Land Rover tasked Hello Monday to help create an optimized version of the user experience flow and interface design aiming to arrive at an overall experience that is intuitive, useful, and enjoyable for the offroading community.
- Assess overall UX of the app – is it still fit for the purpose
- Redesign the full user journey – make it easier to use
- Arrive at an overall experience that is intuitive and likable
- Re-evaluate the app functionalities and features
Prototype and interaction example made in Principle.
My role
In this project, my role was to carry out UX Research and UX Design to aid design decisions made actionable based on insights.
This was an integral part of the design thinking process on this project. To do so, I designed a lean upfront research approach coupled with iterative testing, to create and refine insight-based design.
Discover → prototype → refinement → another one.
○ Desk research
○ Interviews
○ Field trips
○ Prototyping
○ Usability testing
○ User journeys
○ Personas
○ Recruitment
Recording from an interview during a field trip with two off roaders.
Process
To qualify the redesign of the app I helped identify the users and the rich context of the app usage in order to understand the user journeys and prioritize features. These journeys focused on the before, during, and after an off-roading adventure.
Kicking off the project at Land Rover’s office in Dubai, we had an opportunity to inquire about the rich context of going off-roading in a desert. And we did so.
Through field trips with experienced off-roaders and interviews with members of the off-roading communities, we gained a deeper understanding of the users and use scenarios in an immersive off-roading context.
The ethnographic turn – getting inspired.
With a deeper understanding of who the users are and what the context is, we gained a strategic foundation to conceptualize and design an optimized user flow with relevant features.
Workshop mode – doing a feature analysis based on insight thorugh a Must/Should/Could/Wont.
Later and throughout the design process, we conducted three iterative usability tests to validate and optimize the overall experience to make it understandable and useful.
As we couldn't travel to Dubai again, we went to a Land Rover-gathering in Skåne with a group of off-roaders from the Swedish Land Rover Club.
The Land Rover-community is strong on the other side of the world as well.
Knowing that this wasn’t the direct target audience, we learned that they had one strong and shared connection in common: Community and the eagerness to share and tell stories from their adventures.
Designing products and experiences that are useful for communities and fans demands a holistic view and eyes on the road ahead. Just like when off roading.
Learnings
Kicking off with a solid big picture upfront with a focus on the users and the context is invaluable. It drives the creation of strong UX principles and storytelling. It steers the direction for the project based on informed decisions.
Using both personas and user journeys as tools helped carry crucial findings into the design process – remembering the team why and what we are building.
"They are not just only nice descriptions of someone we imagine, but we continue working with them in tandem with design, where they help inform our decisions."
From an interview understanding the impact of involving users.
The app has been developed internally by Land Rover in Dubai and can be downloaded for Android and iOS world wide.
Sooo, if you are into off-roading at any level: start your adventure.
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