Buquebus | Design portfolio

Discovery - Buquebus

The problem

Buquebus is an Uruguayan and Argentinian ferry enterprise, which takes people through the Rio de la Plata, from Uruguay to Argentina and viceversa. They needed a strategy to re-open after the covid quarantines ahd threathened to end their business. They also needed to improve their website's user experience and werent open to the idea of having an app at the beginning. We were facing many obstacles because the heads of the company were mostly digital detractors.

My role

As a the UX UI Designer my dutties were:

1 ) Together with my team, carry out a careful investigation of the users of Buquebus, and their employees.

2) Evaluate the current state of Buquebus' websites.

3) Re-design the visual aspect of buquebus' website based on our findings.

4) Determine if Buquebus needed more digital products such as an app to help them improve their user experience.

The process

Data revision, research, script writting, interviews and surveys

Empathizing

1) Data revision: My team and I reviewed all the data that the previous consulting agencies had already gathered about the users. They had not gathered much about the employees. We worked closely with the head of marketing at that stage. We clasified the information, detected patterns and extracted what we thought could help us achieve Buquebus' goals. Based on what we found we decided to investigate each type of client to challenge the clasifications that the previous consulting agencies had constructed and also decided to investigate the employees, starting by the ones working physically on deck and the ones in charge of resolving complains.

2) Researching the competition: My team and I researched similar companies worldwide and Buquebus' direct competition in Argentina and Uruguay: Seacat and Colonia Express.

One prevalent idea of the heads of the organization was that they needed to lower their prices because their direct competition had low prices. We challenged that idea with data and research.

We presented a list of similar companies that offered a variety of differentials other than low prices. The research is confidential, but I am allowed to present overall insight.

We concluded that Buquebus' differential was the luxury experience, convenience and the fact that they were still the leading ferry service in Argentina. We decided to present several examples of companies similiar to buquebus un those aspects, to our clients, to support our strategy on how to improve the user experience and the service design.

2) Script writting: After that, we wrote scripts for the interviews and the surveys. We wrote scripts of in depth interviews for users as well as for employees.

The surveys were only for clients.

3) Interviews and surveys: Our team, the marketing team and me interviewed 50+ clients from Argentina and +50 employees from various areas, focusing on the ones mentiones before and including the head of marketing, the head of sales, and hr employees.

Key findings:

Employees

- Most on deck employees use very manual methods such as taking notes in notebooks, for things like checking ticket codes, printing tickets, keeping score of how many passengers already boarded and other key operations. This led to many errors and angry users.

- On deck employees bonded over the difficulties they had in managing the high quantity of passengers that used the ferries daily, specially because they had developed their unique methods for doing so, the company had probided little guidance.

- There was little communication between areas, so the employees in the calling center, the ones in charge of resolving complains were not as loyal as the ones on deck.

Users or clients

- Passengers complained about not being able to purchase their tickets online comfortably. They always resorted to calling on the phone.

- The also wanted to be able to solve their problems on their own quickly, instead of having to call on the phone to the Buquebus' call centers for any problem resolution.

There were other findings but they are confidential.

Crafting personas, user journey maps, heuristic evaluation

Defining

With the new data gathered we crafted user personas.

User personas

a) On deck employees: Very loyal to Buquebus, proud to work for the brand. They feel like the brand is very related to the argentinian identity.

b) Call center employees: Not that loyal to the brand. Overwhealmed, underpayed. They feel like they havent been trained to resolve all the types of complains and questions they get from clients and users.

c) Long-time client: Clients that were very understanding with the brand. They were used to the staff using very analog methods such as writting their names and ticket codes on notebooks to keep a log of who had boarded the ferry, they appreciated buquebus as a long time argentinian brand, they had made memories from constant trips through el río d ela Plata. They were reluctant to give negative feedback directly but did mention the constant delays and the long time that buquebus takes to resolve complains. This clients were usually 45 and older.

d) Unhappy client: A younger demographic. Used to buy tickets online or through an app. They complained about Buquebus' way of selling tickets, of checking tickets and about the constant delays. They saw themselves forced to call Buquebus' call center constantly in order to do simple things like buying tickets. Since they hadn't formed a strong emotional attachement with the brand they were less understanding than the older clients.

User journey map and Value Proposition Canvas

The details of the results are confidential.

We identified pain points for both employees and users and ideated solutions by using a value proposition canvas.

Heuristic evaluation

I brough a model for a heuristic evaluation and edited it so it included 9 aspects we had to evaluate from the current websites. The evaluation was performed by the ux designer of our team, the service designer of our team and me, the ui ux designer.

We evaluated the websites on the aspects of:

1)Home page impression and usability

2)Task orientation

3)Navigation and AI

4)Crosselling

5)Product page

6)Search

7)Shopping cart

8)Checkout page

9)Overall funnel

In the last page of the document I elaborated a spider graph that showed the grades of the website in each of those aspects. The evaluation was so useful that we decided to evaluate some of Buquebus' competitor and overlap results to show the client.

Webflows, Wireframing, high fid. prototyping

Prototyping

While the UX Designer was working on the webflows supported by the service designer, I was in contant comunication with them creating the style guide and initial wireframes.

The UX Designer joined me in the creation of those wireframes later on, and then she took over so that I could focus on the UI Kit and high fidelity prototypes.