Profile feature for iGoLadera
The Challenge
As the number of cars on the streets grow, traffic and pollution have been serious problems. Ride Amigos Corp provides an online service which motivates people to opt to carpooling and ride sharing to reduce the number of cars on the street and hence reducing the traffic and the pollution caused.
Ride Amigos gave us a challenge that not a lot of people use ride sharing and carpooling. We had 5 days to figure why and do something to make people opt into it.
The Problem
We did user research in the form of surveys and interviews and found out that people will not opt to ride sharing because of issues with trust.
Why would anyone share a ride with a stranger? Is it safe? We found from our interviews that people don't mind offering rides to other people in their cars, but carpooling with strangers is not something they would do.
The problem was clear, to motivate people to opt to ride sharing and Carpooling, trust between the people using the service was an important factor.
The Solution
We figured that the only way people interested in carpooling and ride sharing can trust each other is by knowing about each other. We also found out from our research that people will trust each other if they belong to the same company, have the same likes and dislikes.
As a result of these findings from our research, we decided to design a profile feature for iGoLadera.com, one of the products of Ride Amigos Corp.
To constrain ourselves, we narrowed down to focus on a very specific user group. We decided to focus on people who work at a specific company and commute daily to and from the company.
As a part of our solution, the user will store the information like the company he/she works for, his/her likes and dislikes, hobbies etc. The online system verifies if the information provided by the user is genuine or not using document scans and online social networking profiles such as Linked in.
Based on this information, the system will suggest people who work for the same company or have their workplaces on the same route, time of travel, and have the same hobbies, likes and dislikes. Our system lets people connect with each other for confirming rides by chatting with each other on the site itself. This could also be used to notify each other if they are late or if they cannot make it in which case, the system will suggest other rides immediately by informing other car poolers.
With this solution, we not only create a system which people can trust, but also create a community of ride sharing between people.
Result
We did usablility tests on our design and found out that knowing who you are sharing a ride with helps build the trust. Ride Amigos Corp was very happy with our design and won the second place in their design challenge.
My Contribution
I did team facilitation, conducted user interviews and surveys, created personas, created low-fi wireframe mock ups, and created concept scenarios.