Rethinking Uber Pool for 15+ riders
Uber Bus is a 15 person shared Uber experience. I led design for this product from 0-1 – first sketch to international launch in Cairo, Egypt and Monterrey, Mexico.
Challenge
By summer 2018, the Shared Rides team had launched and started to scale Express Pool, a version of Uber Pool that included walking and longer wait times. It was getting traction but was still way too expensive for daily use in much of the world. The Data Science team proposed that 12-15 riders was the number we’d need to share the cost of the product and generate a compelling price point to commuters.
Initial problem statement:
What it would look like if Express Pool matched 15 co-riders on one trip? What would need to change to make this work?
Solution
We optimized our time by reusing as much tech as possible and and only built new features that would help us differentiate our product with from our competitors.
Features:
1. Extended walking and waiting
2. Live bus tracking
3. Faster check-in & payment
4. Guaranteed seating
We designed and built the MVP in 4 months and used the learnings to continue to iterate on the user experience for much of 2019. Feel free to jump ahead and check out those designs in the next project.
Company
Uber • Shared Rides 2018
Role
Product Design Lead
Responsibilities
Defining Product Roadmap
UX Design
UI Design
Prototyping
User Testing
QA
VR Walkthrough of MVP
Okay I know it’s a little wonky to watch a VR video not in VR. But the Cario marketing team really hustled to produce this video that fully captured the steps of the rider journey. It’s still the easiest way I’ve found to explain all theses steps quickly.
How to use:
At the beginning, drag the video down to see the phone and then up as you walk to the bus!
Dynamic pickup & dropoff spots
Just like Express Pool, Uber Bus used a bounding box to describe the walking area the rider could be expected to get picked up in. The pickup and dropoff spots were revealed after driver match and could vary from trip to trip.
Live bus tracking & walking directions
For many of these emerging markets the concept of tracking a buses’ live ETA is foreign. When we visited Mexico for foundational research, we discovered that buses were often over crowded and varied drastically in frequency. So providing something as simple as being able to wait inside until your bus is closer was a huge advantage.
Faster check-in & payment
Instead of a rider giving their name to the driver, we built a QR code scanner that allowed the rider to check themselves in. By scanning the QR code, the rider would get a ticket to show to the driver which highlighted the amount owed for the trip. We hoped this would take some of the load off drivers who were now going to have to check-in and out more riders than ever before.
A seat for everyone
This was a call we championed on the design side that had no real impact on UI. During our research trip to Mexico, the team saw first hand what it was like to be on an over crowded bus. We heard about buses that refused to stop for senior citizens for fear they might slow the route down by being unable to wade through the sea of co-riders stuffed in the isles and the doorways. We found people were willing to pay a bit more to have a seat on an airconditioned bus.
Emphasizing dropoff
The rider would be notified a few minutes before dropoff that a spot had been selected, and they’d see walking directions to their destination. Since this wasn’t the most tech savvy group, we wanted to ensure no confusion and added a map marker to explicitly call out dropoff.
