Introduction
This case study is going to be about my third project as a UX design student in RED Academy. This project has brought in a new set of challenges and learning opportunities compared to my previous projects as this time around, the UX students were tasked to collaborate with the UI students to work together with a client to launch an app redesign.
Ryde Today, a premium ride-sharing app in Vancouver
Our client is the co-founder and also the developer for the app, approached us and shared with the UX & UI team more about his company, Ryde Today is a ride-sharing app that allows users to book for luxury vehicles such as SUV and Limousines targetted mainly towards business professionals.
The business goal for Ryde Today is to fill in the void of the ride-sharing market in Vancouver and be the de-facto service to connect users to luxury vehicles with future plans for expansion outside Vancouver.
The Ryde Today app provides a luxury travel experience in the lower mainland with plans for future expansion.
A brief general process works like this:
- Selecting the pickup location
- Selecting the drop-off destination
- Choose the Vehicle type (Sedan, SUV, Stretch Limousine)
- Confirm the booking
- Receive a call or message from the Driver to update & confirm user
- Enjoy the ride
The Problem
As the app is relatively new, the Ryde Today app is still in the early stages of its development. The client has encountered some challenges with the UX and UI aspect of his app which is what led him to me and my team.
The client has shared with us his challenges for his app.
- Design of the app does not give a ‘premium’ or ‘luxury’ look & feel
- Finding an optimal user flow from one screen to another
- Lack of custom icons to create differentiation to competitors
- Selecting a new Typography that looks good and is easy to read
The Research phase
Domain Research
After meeting the client, the UX and UI teams were split to perform their respective tasks to re-design Ryde Today. For the UX team, we started off by learning from the most popular ride-sharing apps available in the market: Uber, Lyft, and Grab.
Uber is the company that kick-started the ride-sharing trend. Founded in 2009, San Francisco, the app now boasts 75 million users worldwide. Uber has been exploring new ways to further improve the user’s experience, expanding their vehicle types to luxury types and offering a more of a white glove service like their newly introduced ‘quiet mode’ which allows users to inform their drivers to keep silent during the trip.
Grab, a ride-sharing service which was founded in 2002 in Singapore, has since expanded to most places in South East Asia. The company now boasts 36 million users with 4 million rides per day. The company differentiate itself by expanding aggressively to services such as premium cars, car rental, food delivery, maps, and payment service.
Lyft came a few years after Uber entering the ride-sharing market in 2012. With 23 million users with 1 million rides a day. Roughly 6% of their rides account for 42,000 for their Premium services like Lyft lux, Lux Black, Lux Black XL. Lyft also differentiates from Uber with a more eco-friendly approach such as scooter sharing as well as implementing a carbon neutral initiatives to promote a healthier environment and traffic.
The Vancouver competitive landscape for ride-sharing is still in its early stage. Many older cab and luxury vehicle companies are trying to shift their business online the digital trend by offering their own app services. However, most of these apps do not offer a seamless experience in terms of UX & UI design.
Kater which just recently launched in 2019, is the only well designed ride-sharing service available in Vancouver so far however they do not offer luxury vehicles just yet.
What does this mean for Ryde Today?
Looking at the top leading ride-sharing companies, The UX team saw how each company are trying to stay competitive by looking at opportunities to stay innovative in the spirit of convenience using varied offerings, from mobile payment services to scooters sharing.
With the current state of the Ryde Today app, the UX team were able to take in design inspirations of other leading ride-sharing companies and consider features to implement into the app.
User Survey
My team wanted to know more about what users of ride-sharing apps think about the service. Based on our domain research comparison between the top ride-sharing apps, We also created questions that are catered towards Ryde Today.
A user survey was created and sent out to a total of 66 respondents.
Interview
We interviewed a driver and an ex co-founder to Ryde Today, gaining valuable insights and feedback from their point of view on the user’s experience when interacting with the app.
Driver’s remarks
- Customer mentions app is not user-friendly
- App sometimes glitches
- Usually picks his customers up at
Co-founder’s remarks
- Speed of response from driver varies
- Users are generally white collared professionals
- Feedback shows that quality interaction between driver and customer can be inconsistent
- Customers expect some form of ‘white glove’ service experience
How did the interview help us?
We learnt that there is a market for a luxury ride-sharing app, which is mostly catered towards white collared professionals. The pain-points from the interview has given us the opportunity to identify the issues and make plans to solve them. For example, by learning that there is inconsistency in terms of communication prompted us to think what can we do to offer users a better way to communicate with the driver.
The Planning phase
Using the survey, the UX team sought out ways to group all the data into a more visual grouping to help us identify key patterns. This was done by creating an Affinity Diagram.
The groups consisted of:
- Personas
- User pain points
- App pain points
- Demographics
- Customer expectations
- Design themes
Looking at the pain points, their expectations when using the app, and the user’s usage behaviour for ride-sharing apps gave the UX team a clearer picture in who the target user for Ryde Today looks like.
User Persona & Customer Journey map
Based on the collected data, a user profile and customer journey was created to help make sense of the typical user’s goals and how they interact with the app when using Ryde Today.
The persona is Michael Smith, a white collared sales professional who is frequently engaging clients from overseas which means he is required to pick them up at the airport. Using Ryde Today will help make his vehicle booking arrangements much more organized and streamlined.
The Customer Journey map is broken down into steps from how he came to know about the app, downloading the app, registration, and going through the phases of requesting a ride to payment. The customer journey map gave us an excellent overview of understanding where the user experience certain pain points are at in the respective phases.
Identifying Ryde Today’s User Flow and problems
As the client has been constantly updating the app, we had some troubles early on getting our hands on the latest version to do testing.
The client, however, managed to provide us with a demo video of Ryde Today’s user flow. The UX team were able to break down the flow by making screenshots and printing them out so we could arrange them to see it’s user flow and to identify any problems from big to small.
Using the printed screenshot as a reference, the UX team digitised the user flow. We were able to spot some missing user flows in the current app design, such as a missing step after making a booking on the app, to being unable to delete or edit credit cards for payment. We also identified some symbol button inconsistencies with different assets used.
The UX team had to make many considerations on what elements should be changed to make the flow more streamlined, as well as features that could be implement based on the data collected on the user’s pain points.
After conducting several discussions between the internal team and the client’s thought process & issues on his user flow, team was able to come up with some ideas. We considered re-design ideas such as reorganising the layout for easier viewing so users to find key information, to adding new features like a simple built-in messaging service with pre-generated text messages for quick interactions between users and drivers.
The Design & Building phase
Low Fidelity
Referring to the list of issues during the planning & ideation phase, multiple quick sketches of low fidelity prototype designs were made and discussed among the UX team to see what would make sense in the user flow.
Mid Fidelity
Once the UX team decided on how the wireframes would generally look like, we proceeded in creating a mid-fidelity design so we can hand the wireframes to the UI team. It also allowed us to create a interactive prototype on the Invision software for user testing.
User Testing
During the user testing phase, the UX team engaged a few users who have never used the Ryde Today app before.
Using Invision software, we tasked our participants to interact with the wireframes, starting from the registration process, to make a trip booking and then ending the trip.
Having users to test the design has been very helpful for the UX team. The testers were able to provide us with a fresh perspective certain stages of the user flow. They also pointed out issues which we have either missed out or not thought of, such as expanding the trip details for more information and spotting missing buttons in the wireframe.
Thanks to the help of our user testers, we went back to the digital drawing board and make some tweaks to the user flow and wireframes.
High Fidelity
At this stage, the UX team has handed over the wireframes to the UI team to implement the graphical changes to the interfaces based on the style guide they created when discussing with the client.
UI changes includes:
Colour palette
Logo redesign
Typography
Illustration
Iconography
UI elements
Using the mid-fidelity wireframes, the UI team were able to make their design changes and have elevated the visual experience to a more premium look to it.
Results
Nearing the end of the project, the UX & UI team were tasked to present to the client along with our instructors with our findings. The team showed him the research and explained to him our process that went behind our re-designs. At the end of the presentation, the client was happy with the proposed app revision and have since implemented some design changes based on our designs.
Conclusion
Looking back at the goals and issues which the client have mentioned when we first engaged with him, The team have succeeded in fulfilling the key deliverables to the client in elevating the Ryde Today app’s design to create a more premium experience. I think both the UX and UI team have done a great job in making that goal happen.
What could be done better
- Team communication — the UX team was not always engaged and there were times where ideas or opinions get lost due to miscommunication
- Survey — I felt that the survey could have been done better in asking better questions pertaining to the user experience when it comes to riding a luxury ride-sharing service. The survey respondents were also not the most ideal as the users sent were skewed towards the younger demographics. Finding more white collared professionals to take the survey.
- Note taking & documentation— There were many instances where good ideas and problems were discussed that could have led to new designs and implementations to the app. However, during the early stages of the project, the UX team were not as organized which led the team to cut off some changes or implementations to the app as the project deadline approaches. Better documentation of the issues could have allowed better prioritisation early on in the project.
Note to self
Being my first collaboration project and also my first time engaging with a client, I wasn’t sure what to expect. There were times where I felt at a loss, especially during the early stages of the project. During times of uncertainty, I need to make sure I ask for assistance and tap on the knowledge and advise from my instructors and fellow classmates.
Team chemistry is also important and I felt I could have done better in communicating with the team and be proactive in voicing out if I notice that that the team straying off the course from the project scope & timeline.
