Postmates Fleet was the app couriers used to complete deliveries, and track their earnings.
I was part of the fleet team, which is responsible for improving the experience and performance of 150,000+ couriers. From personally making deliveries, to shadowing couriers, conducting interviews, and analyzing data, I was able to learn what they needed most from the app they used to complete deliveries, and track earnings.
Earnings flow, and annotations
It is very difficult for couriers to know how they are performing. They are required to manually calculate earnings, and to complicate things further, tips can resolve days or weeks after the delivery was completed.
The primary challenge was a lack of transparency and understanding into how the courier was performing at any given time. This led to frustration on their part, and in turn, more support calls and a distrust of the Fleet platform. Because the app is used under high pressure situations, it is essential that the information architecture is clear, and in spite of the information density, the desired metrics are easy to find and clearly understood.
The prior version of the app showed the current balance available to the courier that could be transferred to their personal account, but no breakdown of that total was shown, leaving the courier in the dark about how the time they spent making deliveries paid off. Also, the delivery history view was an infinitely scrolling list, grouped by day in reverse chronological order.
In addition, incentives such as the earnings guarantee bonus that applies when, say 13 deliveries are completed within a five hour time period were unclear, requiring a lot of calculation and planning on the courier's part in order to make the extra amount.
I was tasked to work in collaboration with another designer on the team to conduct user interviews, shadow during courier ride-alongs, curate user data, and explore concepts for making improvement recommendations to the app. From there I presented my ideas to the larger Fleet team, and upwards to the Postmates design department as a whole.
The strongest source of data that influenced my design process was personally making deliveries using the platform. This first hand experience really brought into focus the pain points that existed in the app.
I was then able to make informed decisions and use all this information to recommend improvements, mostly working within the existing design system, and only adding new components when necessary.
The dashboard gives the current balance priority as cashing out is the most common action couriers take. 70% of transfers are instant pay in spite of the 50 cent fee.
The deliveries view shows the total earnings, breakdown, and stats for the most recent active day. Below that, grouped by day, are the other deliveries from that week. The delivery detail for chained deliveries has a timeline showing pickup and drop off timestamps.
Tapping the information icon near the date header brings up a summary of the earnings for that day. This gives Postmates insight into how they performed on a given day and how their total earnings were generated.
By tapping the calendar icon in the nav bar a picker comes up showing earnings by week, in reverse chronological order. This is useful as it gives quick insight to past earnings as well as progress for the current week. Couriers can measure this against their own goals.
The deposits view shows both cleared and pending deposits grouped by month in reverse chronological order. The deposit detail view shows which deliveries, bonuses, and incentives made up the total amount of the deposit.
It was unclear to couriers which deliveries counted towards a guarantee bonus, leading them to contact support for clarification. This guarantee detail shows which deliveries counted towards the incentive, and which were out of the zone and did not count.
