YEAR
JAN 2019- FEB 2020
ROLES
Product Manager, Interaction Designer
Order on the Phone, Enjoy on the Ride, Continue on the Go
Firefox Lite X Ola Play
RESPONSIBILITY
Innovation, Business strategy, MVP define
TEAM
Researcher, Visual Designer, Business Strategist
The project was a collaboration initiative that incorporates Firefox Lite, a light weight browser, and Ola play, a popular cab entertainment system, to help users seamlessly browse and access unlimited infotainment content and services in the cab ride's entire journey.
BACKGROUND
Goal of the Initiative
This initiative was starting from a casual conversation between the Mozilla Taipei VP and Ola Business Develop Head. The VP smelled the business opportunity, so this project aimed to explore and initiate a collaboration proposal to win Ola's attention.
I did preliminary research since I was not familiar with both the Indian market and Ola. The following shows more context and research findings.
Ola & Ola Play
Research
Mockups
Ola and Ola Play
In 2019, Ola was the leading ridesharing company offering various types of cab options. It had a 60% market share and was available in more than 110 Indian cities. In India, where Android phone dominated, its Android app was top 1 in the Map & Navigation category and had 100 million+ installs.
Ola Play offers free WiFi so that passengers can enjoy various types of content on the in-cab entertainment system controlled by their phones, all from the back seat.
Secondary Research
After a series of secondary research, there were four crucial findings and user feedback of riding Ola Play and assumptions I generated accordingly:
- Most rides are long-distance, the average riding time is 60 minutes.
→ Users need more choices of content to kill time
- Working professionals were the highest frequency of Ola Play users.
→ Users need solutions to continue working
- The content on Ola Play was limited and seldom updated.
→ Ola needs to increase the richness and diversity of content at a low cost
- The device spec varied by car, and the performance of user's phones had a high chance of causing the delay.
→ Ola needs to work with partners with lower performance requirements.
Based on the findings, I quickly developed some mockups and consolidated a pitch deck to introduce Firefox Lite to integrate with Ola Play. The value proposition was to create a seamless and comprehensive infotainment experience for the entire ridesharing journey. After pitching to the VP, I could form a core team to kick off the initiative officially.
Initial pitch to the VP for resource
RESEARCH
Define Right Problem
Since we only collected the preliminary research on the internet, we needed in-field observation and in-depth analysis to understand how the Ola ecosystem worked and user needs.
We gathered enough materials to understand the experience and reproduce the user journey accordingly through some local colleagues' help and a business trip to India. Besides, we also collected knowledge and data from Ola to further develop the business strategy.
According to the research findings, we were confident of forming the problem statement and detailed assumptions for validation.
Problem Statement
Assumptions
Validation
Problem statement
Ola Play offers Aggregated content for a long ride.
It fails to address that Provided content is so limited that users stick to their smartphone for preferred content and services.
We'll address this gap by Offering the ability and better car experience to search and browse the Internet on Ola Play.
Our initial focus would be Businessmen/Family/Travelers.
Assumptions
- Users are not satisfied with the existing content offered by OLA Play.
- Users want to consume their mobile content on the OLA play screen.
- Our content & services are attractive to OLA play users.
- Users who ride more than 30 mins are more willing to ride with OLA Play.
- Users want a consistent/ seamless digital experience during the ride.
Survey result validated the assumptions
WORKSHOP
Explore Best Solution
Through a Susurvey with 152 participants in India, it gave a positive sign that assumptions were validated. The next step was to build a persona that served as inspiration for the team to brainstorm potential solutions. The workshop's round down was starting from a How Might We question, then the participants brainstorm two times to diverge solutions as many as possible. In the end, we prioritized by risk prioritization metrics to evaluate the value and risk of each idea.
How Might We
Integrate mobile browsers, which can access any online content and web apps, into the native Ola Play experience and fulfill passenger needs?
Persona built by research findings
With a high-value and low-risk concept in hand, I developed a product canvas to cover user problems, competitor analysis, go-to-market plan, and business case to ensure we considered each aspect of the concept. At the same time, the team cooked a prototype for concept validation. The purpose was to verify user needs for these features.
PROTOTYPE
Fast-Paced Prototyping and Testing
Building the prototype and testing in a short time needed several crucial roles working in a synchronized platform:
PM created the user story map to cover all user needs in the entire journey. UX designer and visual designer worked closely to develop the experience wireframes accordingly and transform them into a high-fidelity prototype. Meanwhile, the researcher produced a testing plan and recruited participants for interviews. We adopted Figma, a collaborative interface design tool, to work on the same prototype simultaneously.
After interviewing users, we synthesized several key insights and findings to abandon some features and iterate our design.
CONSOLIDATE
Telling a Convincing Story
To this stage, the team had prepared various materials, including marketing insights, user needs, and business models, for me to develop a convincing proposal for Ola. I was responsible for consolidating a good story and pitching to the Ola team.
The collaboration proposal got pretty good feedback, and Ola wanted to further corporate with Firefox Lite. However, because of COVID-19, the Ola business operation stopped, and it also caused the collaboration opportunity to go by the board.
