What’s the problem?
Why is our user retention and user count so low?
During a meeting we hypothesized users did not trust PoolUp as a product since there was little reassurance and trust in using the app.
The user flow leading to the payment method made the product look suspicious because it lacked crucial information about the other people in the car, which made it difficult for users to make an informed decision about their ride. Since PoolUp was not as established as other major apps like Uber of Lyft, providing reassurance and trust was crucial in retaining users in the long run.
getting the project started
Potential solution: provide users with more useful info before they finalize booking
Since the main issue related to trust and reassurance, they needed to be sure that they made the right decision when committing to a 3-hour ride home.
Pitching the project to internal stakeholders and advocating for user research
I brainstormed some features that can be implemented in the user profiles that may be relevant to college students and also to the ride experience, and shared the ideas with the team. At the same time, I suggested that we do a round of quick user research to validate that my ideas would solve user pain points. However, I encountered some resistance due to concerns of time constraints.
I reminded our stakeholders that with research, we could save a lot of time and money that would be needed correcting mistakes down the line in the case of not meeting user expectations and needs.
Ensuring alignment with product vision and technical feasibility
I closely collaborated with the product team to define and refine the project's goals, ensuring that my research and design work would seamlessly align with the product's vision. At the same time, I collaborated with the engineering team to evaluate the technical feasibility of my design ideas throughout the duration of the project. We want to ensure that the designs I create are achievable and compatible with the current app development structure.
alright let's get crackin'
Users do not find PoolUp reliable enough to trust the app
I gathered all the information on our users based on my previous round of user research, which focused on 4 different user groups: solo drivers, ride-share drivers, ride-share passengers, and public transportation users. I also sourced data from PoolUp’s app user tracking, and comments we received in-ride from beta testers. With all these data, I was able to visualize the user journey of booking a ride on the app.
Let me take you on a little journey...
Comic strip of a user’s journey.
Note: screen UI layouts are representative of PoolUp’s app UI at the time
Before a ride even happens, users experience doubt due to lack of information on future trip-mates
diving deeper
How might we help users feel reassured and have some level of connection with their future trip-mates before booking?
I did some market research on competitor apps and dating apps to understand how they help users form connections with one another while establishing trust within the use base and with the product.
Looking at Bumble and Tinder
How do other products help people form genuine connections with one another?
Screenshots I looked at from 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.
User Interviews with college students
Okay, but what makes the car ride a good experience when shared with someone else?
I interviewed 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.
The interviews were split into 3 main sections:
- behavioral inquiries
- sample design validation
- card sorting
Behavioral Inquiries to understand users’ perception of safety and comfortability in past ride-share experiences
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?
Example interaction during user interviews (quoted from real response)
Card-sorting: Understanding drivers’ and passengers’ boundaries in ride-share
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.
Card sorting results of one of the interviewees
research analysis
Affinity Diagram & Insights Organization
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.
Affinity Diagram for insights organization
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
Having common interests and background
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.
design Planning and Decisions
Collaborating with PM to figure out profile requirements
With passenger and driver type users, various profile states, and profiles for both self-facing (users seeing their own profile) and others-facing (users seeing other profiles), I planned for various user profile types, each including slightly different sections and functionalities. I collaborated with our product manager to compile a list of information that would be included in the user profile.
In-Ride Preferences: how 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
- 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
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 others
- Keep the volume high/low
- Doesn’t talk on the phone
Driver Basics
“Would prefer if my driver...”
- Usually quiet
- Down to chat a bit
- Loves to chat
- Plays music
- Doesn’t play music
- Plays the radio
- Lets passengers have the aux
- Drives fast
- Drives at speed limit
- Likes making friends with passengers
Driver Boundaries
- Eating allowed/not allowed
- Drinking allowed/not allowed (except for water)
- No smoking/smoking ok
- Prefer no talking loudly
Interests selection methods: considering engineering feasibility and content management
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.
🌟Selected for Final Design
Option 3
Create and enter your own topics to be presented in their profiles
Search for topics from an autogenerated list of topics based on current trends
Search for topics from a set list of topics curated by the team (ex. 100 items to choose from)
🟢 Offers maximum flexibility and customizability to users
🟡 Offers less flexibility and customizability to users
🟡 Offers less flexibility and customizability to users
🟡 Challenging to manually moderate the content
🟡 Challenging to manually moderate the content
🟢 Easier for content moderation; but would require occasional maintenance to add topics over time to keep them on trend
🔴 Difficult to set up filters to prevent hate-speech or trolling
🔴 Effort to create a search system and algorithm is not worth the impact of this feature
🟢 Shorter engineering turn around time
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.
Selected selection method: User select from set list
design execution
Interface and Experience Design
Users can select tags that resonate with them and share with other users
The new sections that serve to provide more clarity to users looking to find trip-mates, and to help them make informed decisions more easily:
- Bio
- Interests
- In-ride preferences
- Playlist
In the Driver Profile, the added car visual also provides more clarity on the model of the car the passenger might be getting on.
Note: I designed new UI that was not previously in the design system for these new sections. For other elements on the profile screens, I did some minor UI adjustments upon the original designs.
Editing Profiles: tags selection
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.
Editing profile user flow
results and impact
Usability testing reflected positive change in user attitude
I conducted 3 usability tests with passengers that PoolUp tested within their initial stages of the MVP design so that they could compare their experience between the old and new designs.
Ideal next steps: 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.
Pre-Ride Exercise: the Idea I wish I had time to design
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.
signing off...
Spearheading a project and learning to plan everything
Having mostly done small redesigns to the mobile app, this project posed quite a challenge at the time. I had seen a design opportunity for improvement in a major area in the app and was excited to take on the responsibility of leading the design of this flow and advocating for my designs to convince the stakeholders to believe in me.
Designing at a small start-up company meant understanding not all designs are feasible because our product is not backed by 50 engineers, but rather 3. I often had to come up with design alternatives and hold off on some of the more interesting and "fancy" designs, such as the fun fact feature and Spotify profile section, for ones that would be considered more robust and easier to implement due to budget constraints. Learning to design with constraints allowed me to be more conscious of the impact and effects of my work on the users and my team members.
Working with an existing design system also meant that I was able to focus more on the UX aspect instead of the UI, which allowed me to dive in with the research and use the findings to guide my designs. I learned so much about the detailed planning that goes behind creating designs, considering engineering constraints, marketing efforts, and the overall implementation feasibility of a small start-up company. It was an enjoyable experience seeing how a product comes together and how UX design is truly a collaboration between multiple disciplines.
