Rummo
Incorporating knowledge design into a program creation flow for Rummo, a rental car SAAS product.
UX/UI Design
Task Analysis
UX Research
OVERVIEW

Designing a seamless solution for managers to easily create and manage rental car programs for their employees.

I'm sure we all know what a drag getting a rental car can be. Carving out time to pick up and return the car, refilling the gas, etc. are all issues Rummo set out to solve. Now, they are expanding their industry-disrupting service to businesses, launching anew B2B SaaS product, Rummo for Business. I was able to deliver an MVP for the section I designed within an impressive two-week timeframe. My research discovery uncovered impactful features that were added to the final design and my work influenced the direction of Rummo's product roadmap.
THE PROBLEM

How might we design a user-friendly platform that allows managers to oversee and manage company programs and their assignment to groups of employees?

The deliverables were:
1.  A user flow creating a new program and it adding to the list of existing programs.
2.  Based on the user flow created, create mockups of the screens, along with data to back up the structure/logic behind them.
INITIAL DISCOVERY

Programs vs. groups

After my initial discovery, which included desk research and interviews of travel managers/HR professionals, I found companies are less likely to have many travel policies/programs and are more likely to have a company-wide policy, with some exceptions for certain groups of employees. Budgets for specific projects or departments would be assigned to groups, and related to certain cost centers or expense codes.
Therefore, I designed the system to have less programs and support more groups, as well as a default (company-wide) policy. 
TASK ANALYSIS AND MENTAL MODELING
My next research task was asking a previous travel manager to make a mental model for me. Then, I observed her physically ordering the task on post-its, to learn which steps she grouped together. ​Here I learned that the user would actually assign the program at the end of the flow - which surprised me! I had assumed it would be in the beginning. 
The mental modeling and task analysis tests essentially structured my user flow. First, the user would name the program, then assign when/where it could be used, and so on... As I was researching the best ways to analyze this information to incorporate it into my design, I came across the theory of Task-Role Analysis and Knowledge Design.
Task Flow for Creating a New Travel Policy (Program)
As I started to do this analysis on my flow, I remembered a specific quote from my research:
"The most frustrating thing [about renting company cars] is the logistical planning for what we need, and manually reaching out to the customer service rep when I need help."
Essentially, the biggest frustration when organizing rental cars for employees is the cognitive load it takes away from their other work.
I began to look through the documentation that Rummo provided at the start of the project and noticed that even their persona, Joshua, "wore many hats at his company." It was not his full time job to know about rental cars. But he did know his company's goals:
So, looking at the task flow again, let's say the red boxes are the things Josh already knows starting this task. How can we turn all the remaining boxes red for him by building knowledge into the design?
New Task-Role Analysis for User Flow
DESIGN GOALS

To bridge the gap between what the user knows and achieving their goal —

To embed knowledge into the design, I followed these design guidelines:
  1. Include Best Practices: At every opportunity, embed the design with best practices related to their task to reduce cognitive load.
  2. Include Intelligent Defaults: Where possible, default the system to a best practice or personalized option related to the user.
  3. Use Templates: Avoid starting user interactions from scratch, design the system around user-friendly templates to give users a head start on their task.
BEST PRACTICES
The user is prompted to create a default policy before creating specialized ones, that way any employee/client onboarded will be automatically assigned to the default program unless they are given access to a specialized program.
INTELLIGENT DEFAULTS
Empty states throughout the design autofill with the user's details. Additionally, the budget section automatically suggests the best budget based on the user's preferences.
USE TEMPLATES
I added a templates section for users to choose from based on their needs (i.e. executive program) essentially, making the system work for the user.
FINAL DESIGN
IMPACT

Here's what stuck from this iteration -

Default Policy Structure
RUMMO kept a key part of this iteration, the implementation of a default policy to onboard all employees to before assigning them to a special program.
Distance Radius Options + UI
RUMMO also implemented the ability to set a radius and the custom UI I designed for this flow.
Program Duplication
A key feature for power users, RUMMO added the ability to duplicate and edit existing programs to their product as a direct follow to the insights provided in this project.
NEXT STEPS

Here’s what I’d work on in future iterations -

Observational Research/ Contextual Inquiry
I would love to conduct observational research of users interacting with the product (or similar) in real time in order to do a discovery on places where the system fails to do the work for the user. 
A/B Test Button Placements
Additionally, I would change the placement of the "Assign Policy" button.This change was supported in my final round of user testing, where users found the placement was not where they expected it to be. I would like to research existing UI patterns to validate my hypothesis that the button should be inside of the "Members" section.
LinkedIn
Notion
This portfolio was designed with hiring managers and potential collaborators in mind. Please feel free to reach out with new projects.