Creating Digital Solutions for Sustainable Transportation

Challenge

The project's challenge was to create an integrated platform that would support sustainable transportation in Iași by centralizing various eco-friendly solutions, such as public transportation, scooter, bicycle, and electric car rentals, as well as charging solutions for users' own electric cars through easy scheduling directly in the app.

Approach and Solutions

Strategy

Before starting the project, we allocated complex business analysis and strategy resources to ensure a clear vision of the desired functionalities and wireframes for all project developments (6 different modules, as well as a presentation site).

Having complete documentation of all these elements and how they are integrated with each other allowed the project development to flow smoothly, without major problems, and the final result to be stable, coherent, and user-oriented.

The project offers comprehensive solutions, from a simple location search and transportation solutions for users to scheduling charging sessions for electric cars. There are also several partner dashboards, which can have different access levels: from simply integrating their own brand into the Ecohop app to managing their own business directly in the app (ECOhop offers fleet management solutions for scooters or other electric transportation options, without the need for their own management app).

Brand Strategy

The branding part of the project was one of the most engaging phases.

We started from the main insight, the users' need for a centralized and functional application, but which would be more than that: it would be friendly, fun, and relevant.

We chose to use classic elements of the eco concept to quickly convey the desired message, but to mix them with common elements that aimed to take the brand out of the standard patterns and convey a state of well-being, vibrant and powerful.

The App

The mobile application, accessible on both iOS and Android, is the main element of the project, being the bridge to the consumer. The mobile application is what allows users to search for and rent transportation solutions, make simulations, or book rental slots for electric cars at different points in the city.

Partnership

The application offers several types of partnerships, some of which offer partners their own dashboards.

The first module dedicated to mobility partners offers them the possibility to manage the location of their own means of transport, their degree of use and charging, at any time, through their dedicated application. The application's functionalities include: registration or authentication in the system, visualization of the location of their own vehicles and the battery charge level, visualization of income reports from renting their own vehicles, ordering other vehicles to be included in the system, launching requests for quotes for related services (repairs, collection or charging of vehicles), contracting services from interested service providers (who have submitted offers).

The second module is for service providers and is an application that allows access to the system for various providers (from authorized repairers to people who want to supplement their income by managing means of transport in the system by charging them when needed). Through this software application, people who want to offer their services within the system will make their prices and availability public, so that transport providers can choose these services.

Platform Management Business Application

The admin is the central point of the software system and is composed of the management application which has the role of communicating with all the other components in order to ensure the complete functioning of the system. This management application receives information from the means of transport about their location, provides consumers with a list of the nearest available means of transport, blocks/unblocks these means of transport when consumers indicate that they want to start or end a ride, offers all transport providers with real-time information about their status and the evolution of income from the application.

IoT Electronic Module

This is attached to each means of transport available in the application (scooter, bicycle) and facilitates the following functionalities: transmission to the software application of the real-time location and battery charge level, blocking or unlocking the means of transport at the end or start of a ride, anti-theft protection.

Presentation Website

The entire project is presented on a simple presentation site, which provides access to essential information about functionalities and contact. Although simple, we have built a dynamic, one-page site for Ecohop, but sprinkled with punctual animations, attractive graphics, and CTAs for contacting or installing the application.

The application was developed using:

• Technologies: TypeScript, SQL, JavaScript, HTML, CSS
• Frameworks: NestJS, ReactJS, React Native