Giving riders what they want while they wait
At the end of 2017, the Shared Rides team had launched a new version of Uber Pool, called Express Pool, in San Francisco and Boston.
Its goal was to maximize the efficiency of a trip for both riders, drivers, and Uber. It aimed to reduce detours by taking longer upfront to find co-riders who were already along the route. To get riders closer to the route they needed to agree to walk at the beginning and end of their ride.
Problem
We needed to iterate to reach product-market fit and scale the service to more cities.
Quantitative Insights:
1. Cancelations were significantly higher than Pool after driver match
2. Walking was causing both pickup and dropoff location errors to surge
3. Rider to Driver contact rates were up
Solution
We took these quantitative insights and decided to do some qualitative research — both in home to understand our user’s current perceptions and in lab to test new prototypes.
We tested 2 very different concepts, as you’ll see below, and used those insights to align on a bit of a hybrid for the final design.
This feature resulted in a stat sig decrease of 11% post request cancelations and a stat sig decrease in the amount of overall pickup and dropoff location error. We followed up by launching Express Pool in 16 more U.S. cities and 5 others internationally.
Company
Uber • Shared Rides 2018
Role
Product Design Lead
Responsibilities
UX Design
UI Design
Prototyping
User Testing
QA
Before & after:
Waiting & on trip experience
The initial design attempted to divert focus from the new wait time, which could be up to 2 min, by hiding the countdown in the body copy. In an attempt to build brand equity, the pickup and dropoff points were called “Express spots” and the itinerary didn’t make it clear riders had to walk from the express spot to their destination.
Left to right: 1. Waiting to be matched, 2. Walking to pickup, 3. On trip
Research concept 1:
Educate during the wait
To give riders’s something to do while they waited, this design focused on educating riders about the upcoming steps. Riders could click through a horizontal itinerary to see more information.
Research concept 2:
Reward for waiting longer
This concept was about rewarding users for waiting longer by gamifying the waiting experience. For every minute a rider waited, they’d get a discount on the overall cost of their ride.
Concept 2 introduced an itinerary that explicitly called walking at the beginning and end of the trip and removed all notion of Express Spots.
What we learned
Concept 1 undiscoverable & unnecessary for every trip
The functionality was a bit undiscoverable, but users loved the big countdown which would let them put their phone away. If they had questions about how much longer they had to wait, they’d know where to look.
Concept 2 Fun but too many risks
Though pretty fun and delightful, it posed a lot of user questions about what constituted as a wait time, i.e. should they be getting paid for waiting for driver to arrive? In addition, users pretty were critical about the amount of discount. They did favor this version of the itinerary for setting expectations, since they wouldn’t need it to be the main focus after they learned how the product worked.
Time elements were the most import
Top 3 questions: 1. How much longer is the wait? 2. When should I expect to get there? 3. Why the wait at all?
New waiting experience
We used the insights to align on a hybrid design. The key changes included elevating the count down timer, adding a component focused on time at destination, and a stop focused itinerary.
New itinerary on trip
Once a driver was matched the itinerary would update to show the user where they were in the process of the ride. Going from wait, to walk, to ride. We peaked the itinerary on trip, to reinforce the walking expectation at dropoff.
It didn’t solve all our problems. There were still people who wanted to pay less and not walk. But for the people who didn’t understand how Express Pool worked, this new waiting and itinerary experience had significant impact and helped them learn.