UberE
Build confidence in Uber riders with seamless autonomous rideshare from order to drop-off.
Product - IOS App | Duration - 3-4 weeks | Role - Product Designer
Overview
Project Background The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) predicts that driverless cars will account for up to 75 percent of vehicles on the road by the year 2040.
Uber, a well-known rideshare platform, revolutionized the taxi industry by offering riders a convenient and safe way to commute. As the possibility of autonomous driving technology becoming more prevalent grows, Uber must strategize and adapt to the future of autonomous rideshare services to stay ahead in the industry.
Problem While autonomous driving presents several concerns; such as, safety, governmental restrictions, and lack of infrastructure, the major concern it presents is the lack of trust amongst consumers as it requires high confidence from them.
Objective The objective is to enhance trust among Uber users through a smooth autonomous ridesharing journey, starting from the booking process to the completion of the trip, ensuring a secure and reliable experience for all passengers.
Empathize
Research Objectives Understand what users think about the Uber experience
Understand user behavior with relation to autonomous vehicles
Determine user feelings with relation to experiencing autonomous taxi rides
Determine if users would react to audio vs visual cues while on a ride
According to Renub Research, a market research and consulting company, the U.S. autonomous vehicles market will balloon into a $186 billion industry by 2030, up from $4 billion in 2021, based on its recently published report.
Self-driving vehicles are not distracted by things which may influence humans, such as fellow drivers or mobile phones. The firm also reckons 5G connectivity will ensure self-driving vehicles receive more real-time information about their surroundings than a human could ever process.
If growth is sustained, the report suggests by 2046 self-driving vehicles could meet the total mobility demand of the US – 3 trillion miles per annum. Then by 2050 autonomous vehicles could theoretically meet the entire transport needs of the world, with less than one accident per year.
Regulators with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted to grant a novel permit to Cruise, the self-driving vehicle subsidiary of General Motors (GM). The first-of-its-kind permit allows Cruise to charge for rides in its autonomous fleet, without a human driver in the car.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) predicts that driverless cars will account for up to 75 percent of vehicles on the road by the year 2040, which will result in no more drivers (No road rage), no more accidents, no traffic tickets and no more car ownership.
Some potential challenges autonomous vehicle industry possess include:
Fatalities: Balancing safety & timing in rolling out level 4 AVs crucial. Future incidents may raise deployment standards for public trust.
Vehicle Ownership: New trends like small transportation options and ride services may reduce how many people own cars. Focus on areas with lots of people who don’t need cars to get to work to see this change.
Validation Tools: No standard tools validate if AV systems meet road operation standards. Developers self-assess, challenging regulators. A shared tool or test could speed up decisions.
System Cost: Predicting how much AV system costs will drop is hard due to the continuous addition of new sensors, computers, and algorithms to the systems.
Why Using secondary research and user surveys to better learn about the user and their needs.
How Secondary Research (Industry Growth) + User Surveys
Secondary Research (Industry)
User Surveys | I conducted an anonymous survey to understand user the user behaviour and challenges better.
User Persona My interview debrief revealed an a busy associate (Joe) who loves try new technology.
Ideate
Define
Why Utilize past research to set main objectives and determine top priorities for UberE.
How User Persona
Task Flows
Using the same tool, I created three task flows for the main functions the app should have.
The first one lays out ride selection and pairing, as well as technology manual.
The second one lays entertainment options and the ability to test audio and visual feature.
The third one lays out the ability to pullover UberE and rate the experience.
TaskFlow 1: You choose to go to Starbucks to work and want to try a self-driving Uber. After ordering it, you want to learn how this type of Uber operates.
Taskflow 2: While in your Uber, you want to listen to music to relax and prefer to be informed about the car's important movements due to your unfamiliarity with the technology.
Taskflow 3: You have been in the Uber for a few minutes now, but feeling nervous about the ride and would like the car to stop, once the car stops you feel confident about its ability to listen to you - you request to start the vehicle and eventually give your review for this ride.
Sketching Wireframe Using the Balsamiq app on my iPad, I started drawing my wireframes. I used my sitemap and task flows to help me decide which screens to draw.
How Task Flow + WireFrame Sketches
Why With the user persona and research, it was time to brainstorm and imagine how UberE could be created logically.
Design
Added a prompt screen for new users to help them navigate Uber E (Note: the walkthrough has not been designed for the screens)
How UI Design
UI Design
Updated the button padding to keep it consistent throughout the screens.
Updated the colour scheme of the categories as well as resized them to achieve a more consistent aesthetic.
Updated the Audio visual icon to better depict the action.
Re-designed the screen to include a prompt window to highlight Ask UberE and to keep the design consistent with other screens.
Final Prototype
Last but not least, I would like to invite you to take a moment to thoroughly enjoy and appreciate my final prototype! Your feedback and thoughts would be invaluable to me.
As you go through the prototype, keep in mind the below tasks:
You choose to go to Starbucks to work and want to try a self-driving Uber. After ordering it, you want to learn how this type of Uber operates.
While in your Uber, you want to listen to music to relax and prefer to be informed about the car's important movements due to your unfamiliarity with the technology.
You've been in the Uber for a few minutes and feel nervous. You want the car to stop. Once it stops, you feel more confident and then shortly after you resume your journey. Later, you leave a review for the ride.
Affinity Map Findings
User testing sessions went well. All users completed the tasks easily, and their feedback focused mainly on making things clearer, suggesting improvements, and discussing hypothetical cases that were not part of the project.
Overall, the feedback from users was very positive regarding the design and the innovative idea of the new feature for Uber. Many appreciated the thoughtful approach taken in its development and expressed excitement about its potential impact on the overall user experience.
Users have highlighted the ease of use, noting how intuitive and straightforward the interface is to navigate. They also appreciated the addition of an appropriate amount of features that enhance functionality without overwhelming the user. Furthermore, the good use of space within the design allows for a clean and organized layout, making it visually appealing. In addition, the application maintains consistency with the existing app, which helps users feel more comfortable and familiar while utilizing its new functionalities.
Here is some specific feedback:
Pullover feature was appreciated the most as it allowed the users to pause the experience when needed.
Majority of the concerns were with legibility of the app in terms of font size and alignment. Some of the icons also require resizing.
User also suggested with updating the entertainment options screen to better blend with the current design. They also suggested removing the tipping screen as no driver is present.
While all the users admired the thought process for adding all the considerations, they also suggested giving first time users a walkthrough guide option as a prompt.
In conclusion, the iterations that were suggested were minor but will make a big impact for the user experience.
Priority Revisions Matrix
The next step was to choose which issues and ideas to address. By organizing the notes in my Affinity Map into a priority chart based on user value and effort to implement, I could easily identify problems to solve right away (high value, low effort), those to tackle next (high value, high effort), and issues to ignore if they had low user value and were not recurring.
Why To enhance my product's overall usability, it is essential to carefully analyze and implement improvements based on the valuable feedback provided by users. This process will help ensure that the product meets their needs and expectations more effectively.
Revisions Here are the main changes I made to my wireframes, showing the updates and improvements made during the design process.
Highlighted the audio/visual icon with a blue stroke to show that this feature is active.
Why I carefully refined UberE’s overall appearance by meticulously crafting its user interface and enhancing its visual aesthetic, ensuring that it was not only polished but also visually appealing to users. Following this, I proceeded to conduct thorough testing of the application on the online platform to ensure optimal functionality and user experience.
Protoype
Test
Why With my prototype successfully up and running, it was finally time to carefully validate and thoroughly test my product, as well as make any necessary revisions based on the feedback and results I obtained during the testing.
How Usability Testing, Affinity Map and Priority Revisions Matrix
Usability Testing
Total User Testing Participants: 3
Duration: 4.5 hours
Goal: To test my assumptions of how users would navigate the app and if users would find the features useful and seamless with the current app.
# of Tasks: 3
Each user had to finish 3 different tasks during the session. After completing the first task, I asked specific questions to understand their actions, expectations, frustrations, and overall views on the experience. I also recorded each user testing session to capture the dialogue and interactions, which helped produce detailed final results.
Outlined below are the 3 scenerios that were provided to the users.
You choose to go to Starbucks to work and want to try a self-driving Uber. After ordering it, you want to learn how this type of Uber operates.
While in your Uber, you want to listen to music to relax and prefer to be informed about the car's important movements due to your unfamiliarity with the technology.
You've been in the Uber for a few minutes and feel nervous. You want the car to stop. Once it stops, you feel more confident and then shortly after you resume your journey. Later, you leave a review for the ride.
Affinity Map
I made an Affinity Map to summarize my usability testing results, noting Successes, Concerns, and Suggestions, and used color coding to distinguish between users.
Iterate
Why Now that the detailed wireframes are complete and thoroughly reviewed, I tested my ideas for the various task flows. I utilized the Figma file to create a clickable prototype that incorporates simple interactions and engaging animations to effectively demonstrate the user experience.
How High-fidelity click-through prototypes
Number of Participants: 26
Age Demographic: 20-40
Tech Savviness: 7-10
Location: Canada & United States
Survey Findings
Insight 1: All participants have been in a rideshare vehicle of some sort (Uber, Lyft, etc.)
Insight 2: All participants are either receptive or very receptive to trying new technology.
Insight 3: 18 participants suggested that they would want some sort of control while sitting in an autonomous vehicle, while 7 participants were unsure and 1 participant doesn’t want any control.
Insight 4: 50% of the participants were likely to use an autonomous rideshare, while the other 50% are unlikely to use it.
Insight 5: 13 participants think that having audio or video will help with autonomous rideshare experience, while 7 participants were unsure and 1 participant didn’t think it would help.
Insight 6: In a given month, 2 participants, use rideshare very frequently , 6 participants (23%) use rideshares sometimes, 18 participants (69%) use it very infrequently.
Insight 7: Some of the reasons participants suggested that would prevent them from taking autonomous rideshare, include; safety concerns, surging costs, lack of human element, poor ratings, lack of trust and understanding.
Insight 8: 50% of the participants had a positive perception (exciting, unique, cool, convenient and unimaginable) of using autonomous rideshare, while other 50% shared negative sentiments (dangerous, scary, intimidating, anxious, hesitant) regarding the adoption of autonomous rideshare.
Insight 9: Participants described there ideal autonomous experience to be easy, simple, safe with some sense of control to the passenger.
Insight 10: Some participants suggested having communication as a key part of the experience where others suggested they wouldn't want any unnecessary chit chat.