OUR WORK
Kleenheat Gas Rethinking how trucks deliver gas with custom IoT software.
Challenge
Kleenheat operates across three Australian states, delivering gas to an extensive client base of businesses and residential homes. An organisation this expansive requires innovative and up-to-date technology to operate.
Kleenheat’s bulk delivery vehicles are equipped with technology systems that update drivers on the details of their next job and allow them to send vehicle maintenance and cargo monitoring reports back to central offices via a tablet, as well as hardware that prints job documents during their trip. These systems previously operated on 2G, but with the closure of the network due, the Kleenheat team approached us in need of an urgent solution.
Approach and Inputs
The opportunity became clear - not only could we work collaboratively to refresh and streamline the Kleenheat technology (both software and hardware) onto the current wireless mobile network, but we could also take the chance to rethink and redesign the drivers’ user experience.
With a matter of months to design and deliver a solution, we needed to move faster than ever. Together with Kleenheat we assembled a large group of stakeholders. This group included internal management and IT teams, Kleenheat vehicle drivers and Hatchd user experience specialists. It also included technologists from our sister company, Adapptor, to carry out a truly collaborative design process which combined insights from this diverse group of stakeholders.
16 person
‘Design Team’
Including truck drivers, BAs, Schedulers, UXers, App Developers, Architects and Hardware specialists
12
metre long
User journey map to understand the challenges of the statewide gas delivery process.
Only
4 months
From requirements gathering to first production release.
After an investigation into the bulk delivery’s current backend system, our in-depth design thinking workshop helped us gather a broad range of insights and challenges from different domains of the business, which then became defined as ideas and opportunities. We mapped out the current user journey, and captured tangible, first-hand reports of how staff interacted with the current technology, what they expected it to be capable of, and what they did and didn’t like about it.
With the foundations of our collaborative thinking established, we began to create low fidelity wireframes to lay out a new user journey, featuring an app and modern hardware that would work symbiotically with Kleenheat’s backend data system.
We knew that certain safety requirements needed to be in place in any new solution, due to the nature of the delivery vehicles’ cargo: both in terms of software (‘fit to drive’ declarations need to be completed before a driver can commence a trip), and hardware (tablets need robust casing to contain the small possibility of any sparks or malfunctions which could cause an explosion). Drivers must also be able to print a Dangerous Goods Certificate for every trip, so whatever we designed had to work with the in-cab printers.
Our UI creative design was restricted to a carefully chosen colour suite to allow drivers to have good app visibility in different conditions on the road: long haul journeys, bright sunlight, nighttime and so on. Feedback from drivers also told us that a simple layout was of utmost importance - bigger buttons and more spacing were vital for easy operation by drivers with large hands or wearing gloves.
The Hatchd and Adapptor team helped with a recommendation for an up-to-date ‘intrinsically safe’ Android tablet that could replace Kleenheat’s current in-cab tablets - which were nearing end of life - and met the rating requirement to allow them to be taken out of the vehicle, making them much more useful for drivers on the road. Our user experience experts refined their lo-fi wireframes into functional and clickable prototypes, complete with our proposed interface design, and tested them with drivers, using their feedback to carry out further refinements.
Simultaneously, app development began in earnest to help us meet the extra tight deadline. Kleenheat’s tech department exposed areas of their backend system with a JSON REST API that allows the app to function with it, while we used Google’s app development framework in the build. The system uses a small Raspberry Pi on board each vehicle, which runs server code we wrote to connect the dashboard printer, a flow meter which measures the volume of gas in each tank, and the app. Rounds of comprehensive in-field testing and fixing followed before delivery.
Kleenheat’s interlinked bulk delivery solution now sees an app, backend database, in-vehicle server, flow meter and tablet all functioning in a seamless and connected ecosystem, joining our forward-thinking technologies with those that were already in use - connecting the new with the old.
Outcomes
This collaborative technology design has provided a much more nimble user experience for both admins and drivers, with increased data visibility for central office, instant reporting on vehicle configuration and maintenance, and a simple, modern and accessible interface.
Initial feedback from Kleenheat was that although projects like this could take years to scope and create, they were impressed that we delivered a solution within an unusually small timeframe - all the while balancing business, admin and driver requirements.
“Our in-depth service design workshop helped gather a broad range of insights and challenges from different parts of the business. We were able to capture first-hand reports of how staff interacted with the previous technology, what people liked and didn’t like about it, and most importantly, map out the future-state user journey.
We were thoroughly impressed with how quickly Hatchd understood what our drivers and back-office needed and the emphasis they placed on user experience. Our drivers are thrilled with the new system. Not only is it a massive improvement, but it has made deliveries faster and safer increasing efficiency and provides a robust and elegant solution which is already being leveraged for additional capabilities.”
— Kleenheat’s Manager Operations, Guy Bowden.
“The innovation for us is that we now have a far more intuitive app. The drivers find it much easier to use. We can train a driver in five minutes as opposed to four hours. Also, we now have software running on a generic Android tablet that gives us the flexibility to add other functions for the drivers.”
— Kleenheat’s Project Lead Larry Nick.