Table of Contents
Let's go on a little journey…
Before a ride even happens, users experience doubt due to lack of information on future trip-mates.
How do other products help people form genuine connections with one another? Let's take a look at Bumble and Tinder…
Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble are quite popular these days, so I wanted to see how they engage their users to interact with others on their platforms, what topics and sections are shared on a user profile and what aspects about a person to people actually care about.
What makes the car ride a good experience when shared with someone else? Let's interview some college students.
I spoke with 3 undergraduate and 1 graduate CA in-state students to further understand the elements that create a positive ride-share experience, specifically for mid-distance (2+ hrs) rides. The journey does not start when the ride begins, but rather when they begin to browse and book their rides on the app and the anticipation and expectations they have before the ride. I used behavioral Inquiries to understand users’ perception of safety and comfortability in past ride-share experiences. The interviews were split into 3 main sections:
Past Ride-share Experience
What was your exp like when...
driver is a stranger
driver has known similar backgrounds (ex. same college)
driver is a friend/family
Perception of Safety
What made you feel safe or unsafe during in a ride with unfamiliar trip-mates (ie. Uber, Lyft, Taxi)?
Personality in Social Situations
How comfortable are you in social situations, and with speaking with strangers at various levels of familiarity?
I scoured Reddit posts in r/Uber, r/Lyft, and inquired some of my peers to find out what people appreciate or despise in a ride-share situation.
After compiling the key points, I created a card-sorting exercise for interviewees to sort them in terms of importance and to group them into categories before naming them. I was able to gather insights on how much users would care about certain scenarios and behaviors in a ride-share. The grouping also helped me design the UI of the profile section later on.
I summarized the research results and reviewed all the information by laying them out in an affinity map to guide my interpretation and analysis of the qualitative data from the interviews. Along each section, I summarized the key points and further organized all the information.
After sorting through all the responses, I extracted insights that were useful for design solutions and also shared other product/engineering solutions with the rest of the team for future considerations.
In-Ride Preferences
Users care about sharing their own and knowing others' preferences:
Music Playing
Sleeping / Convo
Eating(vax)
Music
A way to share music taste and listen together in the ride.
Familiarity
Having common interests and background.
Fun Facts Feature*
Activity based prompt and answer on profile.
*The team really liked the fun facts feature idea, but due to engineering and time limitations, they encouraged me to prioritize other designs solutions that can be more easily implemented.
In-Ride Preferences: how do users prioritize different boundaries during a ride?
I introduced the "In-Ride Preferences" section in the user profiles that would display preference tags that correspond between the passenger and the driver. From the card sorting exercise and insights from the interview, I compiled the list shown below. For each of the driver and passenger In-Ride Preferences, there is a section for basic preferences and another for users to set boundaries and expectations for others.Users would choose tags that resonate with them in the "In-Ride Preferences" section of their profile.
Passenger Basics
"I am…"
Usually quiet
Falls asleep in car
Down to chat a bit
Loves to chat
Prefers music playing
Prefers fast/slow driver
Likes making friends with drivers
Driver Basics
"Would prefer if my driver…"
Allows/Doesn’t allow eating
Allows/Doesn’t allows drinking (outside of water)
Doesn’t smoke
Not chat loudly with others
Keep the volume high/low
Doesn’t talk on the phone
Passenger Boundaries
"Would prefer if my driver…"
Allows/Doesn’t allow eating
Allows/Doesn’t allows drinking (outside of water)
Doesn’t smoke
Not chat loudly with othersKeep the volume high/low
Doesn’t talk on the phone
Driver Boundaries
"Rules for my car…"
Eating allowed/not allowed
Drinking allowed/not allowed (except for water)
No smoking/smoking ok (hi key questionable LOL)
Prefer no talking loudly
Interests selection methods: which method is most feasible from an engineering and content management standpoint?
Since there are endless possibilities for potential topics of interest from our users, there are multiple ways the users can select what they want to present in their profiles. To narrow down what would be achievable on the engineers' end, I presented some ideas during our discussions.
After going through all the challenges and the impacts of the above options we ended up selecting Option 3: Select from set list. Our main consideration for this was the simplicity of implementation effort for the whole team in comparison to the other options, as it would be much easier for engineering to set up the framework and also easier for the product team to moderate what goes on in the user profiles.
Before vs After redesign of profile screens
Users can edit their profiles using the tag selection method.
Editing profile user flow
Since the design for pill selection (Interests and In-Ride Preferences) was not already included in PoolUp's design system, I created the overall UX flow for each of the sections, from bio, interests, typical routes, and pronouns, to In-Ride Preferences for both passengers and drivers. Below is an example of what editing "Rules" looks like from a driver's perspective.
Ideally, the next step would be to conduct some data analysis.
If I had more time, I would have collaborated with our data analyst when the design was shipped to analyze for any decrease or increase in user drop-off rates and also any increase in time spent on viewing profiles, as these indicators can inform us on how successful the design is and how the next iteration can be done.
Due to the timing of this project, I was not able to see my designs being shipped on the actual app as I had left the company after the conclusion of this project. However, I left the team with a plan of action and documentation for the designs if they choose to pursue them.
I wish I had the time to design the pre-ride exercise idea I had…
Essentially, once all the passengers and the driver are matched in a ride, they would be grouped in the app and can complete a little game-like activity by posting questions and answering each other's questions to get to know each other a bit more. This would be interesting to see working for even longer rides, such as from Santa Barbara to the Bay Area, a roughly 5-hour drive. Users would be able to have some fun and interact with each other in the car. Since this idea was deprioritized, I ended up not having enough time to design it.