Streamlining UX for Large-Scale Electric Mobility
Public electric bus fleets are logistical organisms. Hundreds of buses, thousands of trips, dozens of stakeholders — and until recently, most of it coordinated through phone calls, WhatsApp messages, and end-of-day Excel sheets or Physical papers.
The result? Kilometres lost. Revenue leaked. Drivers frustrated. Incidents mismanaged. A system running on reactive firefighting instead of intelligent design.
This project set out to change that — by designing two interconnected products from the ground up: a Driver Companion App for the people behind the wheel, and a Fleet Edge Operational Platform for everyone managing the fleet.
My Role
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End-to-end UX design across both products — from early research to development-ready screens
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Moderated and synthesised user research across 90 participants in three cities
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Designed for 7 distinct user personas spanning field staff to city-level administrators
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Collaborated with business, product, and engineering through iterative sign-off cycles
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Led end-to-end prototyping and micro-interaction design across the full product.
Research - Going into the Field
We Talked to the People, Not Just the Problem.
Before any wireframe was drawn, we spent 6 weeks embedded in depots across Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru — conducting one-on-one, in-person interviews with 90 participants.
Drivers. Duty dispatchers. Charging staff. Gate staff. Incident managers. Depot managers. City operations heads.
Every role that touched a bus, we talked to.
90 Participants | 6 Weeks | 8 Personas
Insights from Research
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Operational delays create a cascade. A missed charge, a late driver, a rerouted bus — each one ripples outward into KM loss and penalty revenue.
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Data gathering was manual and slow. Critical decisions were being made on stale information — or no information at all.
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Fleet maintenance gaps hurt readiness. Buses weren't going down dramatically — they were quietly accumulating untracked issues.
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Incident communication was broken. By the time the right person knew about a breakdown, the damage was already done.
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Drivers felt the system was against them. Opaque duty allocation, no visibility into their performance, no voice when things went wrong. Disengagement was inevitable.
User Personas
Driver
Goal: Complete routes on time, feel trusted by the system.
Key frustration: No guidance during trips, unfair duty perception, no support during incidents.
Duty Dispatcher
Goal: Keep out-shedding on schedule without chaos.
Key frustration: Last-minute reallocations, zero real-time visibility, excessive phone coordination.
The 2 Products
Driver Companion App
The driver had one of the most demanding jobs in the system — and the least support. Our design philosophy for this app was simple:
20% action, 80% information.
The app should do the thinking so the driver can focus on the road.
Fleet Edge Operational Platform
From duty confirmation to charging priority to penalty forecasting — every operational role gets a dedicated interface. No more calls, memory-filled paperwork, or yesterday's data. Just the right information, to the right person, at the right time.
Impact & Outcomes
The platform was designed to address real operational pain points observed across depots, drivers, and dispatchers. These are the key improvements it is built to deliver.
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Reduced KM loss — Route adherence now tracked in real time, with proactive alerts before schedule breaches compound.
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Faster incident resolution — Structured ticketing replaced the phone-and-WhatsApp chain across depots.
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Driver accountability & trust — Transparent performance data and fair duty allocation reduced disengagement.
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Streamlined duty allocation — Drivers are auto-assigned and confirm or decline shifts directly in the app, replacing the manual WhatsApp back-and-forth where dispatchers had to individually map, message, and chase confirmations for every duty.