Ridesharing App

A case study of a series of design iteration through field and user research
Role:
Product Designer,
Visual Designer
Year & Duration:
2019 (4 Month)

This MVP is a peer-to-peer ridesharing app, in which car owners and ride takers are matched if they’re on the same way.

In this project, I teamed up with a product manager, three developers, and another designer. The app was developed from conceptualisation to MVP status.

A platform to share your ride smoothly, with trust and transparency.

Our goal is to provide a friendly and trustworthy ridesharing product. The iteration design allowed us to create more trust from the users. We added a short tutorial to the home page to clarify role switching, broke down each step; prioritised and consolidated the information when the user is making the match accepting decision.

Feature walkthrough
Main design process

Idea Validation

We used quantitative method to find out the willingness to drive/ride with a strange person, and qualitative methods to learn about user motivation and expectations.

The top findings in user interview are:

  • More than half of the drivers (53%) are willing to take someone for a ride
  • Most drivers are not giving a ride for money
  • Women drivers prefer to take more women riders
Sneak peak of guerrilla interview result from driver

Competitor
Research & test

All direct and indirect competitors were collected and we've tested one of our direct competitors to find out how the process works.

In this phase, I did more research on the competitors and we were able to get in contact with two of them. In the meeting, we asked about some problems they were facing and did some technical exchanges.
During the competitor test, the entire team was involved to better understand the requirement from technical and design.

Sneak peak competitor audit

UX Design Process

After defining the main experience, I outlined a high-level user flow to start wireframing and testing loop.

process flow
Wireframe sketch
High-fidality wireflow

Usability Test

We're tested our high-fidelity prototype with 10 users and identified some usability issues.

In the first usability test, we took our clickable high-fidelity prototype to a local usability testing event. 10 users (6 drivers, 4 riders) tried out the prototype. Based on the feedback, I’ve iterated the UX and visual design.

UX Problem & Iteration

The reaction time has spent on the key screens was too long: The users were having difficulty to identify driver and rider roles, as well as making decisions whether to accept the request.

Through the usability test, we found out there were not enough indicators for users to understand the switch of driver and rider role, especially for the one’s that haven’t learn similar UX patterns from other apps.

  • Role selection button causes confusion
  • Information not concise on map
  • Ambiguity of request process

Design Solution

Making the onboarding process more intuitive, by simplifying each step.

Before

Confirm destination, choose driver/ rider role, and confirm the number of seats which will be offered - although it’s easier to combine them in one step, according to the test, users seem to have difficulty to understand how the ‘role switching’ button works.

After

We have broken down the route publishing into two steps to make the information less dense for the users. Especially for the ones, who never used a peer-to-peer ridesharing platform before.

Role Switch

Driver and rider should be consciously changing their role the moment when they’re landing on the map screen. In earlier design, we collected UX patterns from competitor apps. However, from the test, we’ve learned that most of our users were not familiar when them. We realized that we need to spend more effort on introducing it to this particular market.

Design Solution

Higher glanceability for the driver, and a better experience for the rider.

Before

Information scattered the entire screen. It takes more time to read all the relevant information.

After

All relevant pieces of information are grouped in the bottom area, to make it more convenient for the driver to make decision.

Prioritise the information

In the previous design, the information was presented in text and form. From user feedback, we found out that users have very different preferences of perceiving information, in text or in form. We prioritized the information on each screen, and try to visualize with form and text to the important information. (Visual hierarchy: text + form > text > form)

Final Solution
Driver & Rider

1. Search\ Publish ride

Driver gets requirement from riders from the same route.

Static flow

2. Get Matched

Driver and rider are matched by the matching algorithm, request is send to driver and rider accordingly.

Static flow
Driver
Rider

3. Meet up

When both accepted the request, driver and rider meet at meeting point.

Static flow
Driver
Rider

4. Drop off

Rider checkout at the end of the journey, while driver continue the ride.

Static flow
Rider
Driver

Learnings & takeaways

I had a great time working on this project as it’s still a blue ocean in the local market, and it will help the company to gather a lot of insights regarding local ridesharing. However, the Go Live of this MVP was postponed due to the management decision and new strategy of the company. Nevertheless, I had a lot of leanings for business analysis and the entire product design process.

From the usability test in the earlier phase, I learned that it’s important to adapt existing design patterns and ‘start from the standard’, but it’s more important to know when to break them. An MVP is the simplest version of the core function, and the customer group should also be very specified, to make sure the product is focusing on the target.

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Credit Risk Digital