CASE STUDY - 2019

Lyft Long Distance

Lyft Long Distance (LyftLD) is a feature developed for Lyft to include ride shares for trips longer than an hour in duration (ex. London, ON to Toronto, ON). Prior to this application, drivers would post their trips on Facebook and Kijiji in hopes of finding passengers making the same trip and looking to purchase a seat in their vehicle and vice versa.

Building on the Lyft platform, LyftLD offers the security of required security screenings, filters to narrow down postings as well as reviews and ratings on both driver and passenger profiles.

TIMELINE

3-week conceptual group project through General Assembly

ROLE

Associate UX designer - discovery, user research, design, animation, user testing

TOOLS
Protopie IconFigma IconGoogle Forms Icon
TRIP RESERVATIONS

Date Filters with Driver Profiles

User can browse relevant long distance rides base on their date and location preferences. Upon selecting their preferred trip, users have the ability to browse trip and driver details as well as message the driver. ​When the passenger requests the seat, they are brought to a checkout flow then redirected to a 'pending' confirmation page until the driver approves their request.

DAY OF THE TRIP

Trip Timelines and Updating Maps

Passengers are notified that their driver is 5 minutes away then redirected to an up to the moment map of their drivers location. ​Throughout the ride, both drivers and passengers have access to the map as well as a timeline of the trips remaining duration. Upon completion of the ride, passengers are prompted to leave a tip and reviews for their driver.

THE SNAPSHOT

Story Behind the Problem

As a university student in 2017, I began to notice an influx in posts within Facebook groups from student drivers and passengers posting for ride shares. Students were looking for low cost ways to travel these long distances to and from campus without the high price of Greyhound or VIA rail.

The long distance ride share market existed across hundreds of Facebook groups and postings on Kijiji in the GTA alone. Unfortunately, postings on these various platforms within sometimes private groups can make finding a cheap ride quite challenging and can pose potential safety issues to drivers and passengers alike.

There needed to be one centralized platform for all of these postings so that users could access all available rides to their desired long distance destinations.

Animation of a white sedan
AT A GLANCE

Case Study Contents

01

THE PROBLEM

02

THE DISCOVERY

03

THE ANALYSIS

04

THE DESIGN

05

THE PRODUCT

01

THE DESIGN PROBLEM

Go Further With Lyft

Today, if I search ride sharing in the GTA there are over 1,500 posts on Kijiji and hundreds of groups on Facebook for users to sift through. The 'Montreal to Toronto' ride share Facebook group has over 30,000 members with an average of 18 posts a day, that is over 6,500 posts a year in one group of the hundreds existing.​ Hundreds of rides a day are being arranged across numerous, unorganized platforms creating a largely untapped market for long distance ride shares.

On Lyft, users are currently able to book long trips but the fees can reach hundreds of dollars per ride and distance is capped.

02

THE DISCOVERY

Researching the Current Market

Our team put together a survey to understand our users experiences and motivations for using long distance ride shares across different platforms. We received 22 responses, 20 of which had only ever been passengers that answered yes to our qualifying question: Have you ever taken a long distance ride share?

VIEW SURVEY

To get a better understanding of drivers, we conducted 2 contextual inquiries with current Lyft drivers while taking rides around the city. We were able to observe our participants and question them while they work in their own vehicles.

"Though they rarely come about, I prefer longer rides ... they reduce the wear and tear on my vehicle and typically pay well" - Anjum, a Lyft driver

Identified Pain Points

Based on our interviews and contextual inquiries we received a lot of insight on our users. Consistently there were 3 main problems with current long distance ride sharing...

PROBLEM ONE - Complete Lack of Safety Regulations

Across the various available platforms, drivers are able to offer seats in their vehicles without any mandatory background checks or passenger review systems. This can lead to safety issues for passengers with no consequences to the driver as seen in the warning post on the right.

PROBLEM TWO - NO FILTERS TO NARROW DOWN THE SEARCH

With no filters for date, time or pickup and drop off locations, users must sift through hundreds of posts in order to find a ride that fits them perfectly.​

The following video shows all of the posts in the "Toronto/Kingston/ Ottawa Rideshare" group within 48 hours. As a user browsing, it might take hours to find a post that suits their needs. On the other hand, as a user who posted 48 hours ago, that post is now lost below new options and might not be found by someone looking for it.

PROBLEM THREE - INCONSISTENCY BETWEEN POSTS

There is no required information for each post on these different platforms therefore we get a mashup of very vague options to options with in-depth information on the ride. Users may then waste hours searching groups and contacting the individual who posted just to find out it's not even in the right city.

03

THE ANALYSIS

Understanding Our Users and the Problem

Through our research we were able to assemble and organize our participants into the primary user group of: Students on a Budget, comprised of both drivers and passengers. Our users are ultimately looking for convenience in searching and ease of booking on a trusted platform to complete their long distance ride shares.

With our users and their problems in mind, we developed the following question:

How might we provide a reliable, cost-effective, and easy-to-use platform for securing long distance ride shares, while building brand familiarity for Lyft to expand it's user base and increase revenue?

Project Goals

By asking ourselves the question above, we were able to determine the immediate and long term goals of our product for our users and the Lyft brand.

PRODUCT GOALS
  • Security: Provide reviews and ratings for all users as well as requiring mandatory background checks for all drivers, as per Lyft's current regulation.
  • Ease of Use: provide numerous filters to narrow down search results based on city, date and time. Additional filters for number of passengers, and baggage allowance.
  • Consistency: required input fields for trip details to ensure all necessary information is included and take advantage of Lyft's cashless system.
LONG TERM GOALS
  • Increase Market Share: In order to keep Lyft consistently competitive with Uber it's important to develop new features that appeal to targeted users and increase overall user base.
  • Increase Driver Network: By requiring drivers of these long distance rides to undergo background checks, they would thus be able to transfer over to short distance Lyft drivers. First time drivers will get a taste of the Lyft experience and potentially convert to a full-time driver.

Competitive Analysis

Our research turned investigating competitors in similar markets. We focused on Facebook, which is used to facilitate introductions in order to book long distance rides and Poparide, a west coast company specializing in long distance rides.

FACEBOOK: IMPLEMENT CHAT FUNCTION
Facebook users are able to join private groups to find a ride then communicate through messenger with their peers to discuss trip details. Since users rely on this chat function for ride coordination we decided to add a similar feature to LyftLD.


POPARIDE: ADDITION OF CONCISE CARD DISPLAY OF RIDE INFORMATION
Poparide offers a card format of search results which allows trip information to be clearly displayed for users. For our list page, presenting ride details in such a way allows users to see key information up front, and click in for further details.

04

THE DESIGN

Preliminary Sketches to Mobile Mockups

We began our design ideation process by separately sketching key pages then coming back together to align our focus and amalgamate our work into one. User interviews and testing on the preliminary product allowed us to diverge our thinking and expand our user understanding which we could then refine and converge into a working prototype.

Alterations After Usability Testing

BEFORE

6/8 users felt as though the checkout process seemed lengthy as it requires users to fill in payment details and the design was slightly incongruent to Lyft's current format.

AFTER

With this feedback in mind, my team and I examined Lyft's checkout. We determined that the Number of Seats page should feature a side scroll function that is used throughout the existing app. Additionally we altered the checkout details to expand with a swipe up and feature pre-populated payment information.

An important aspect of our initial project planning was the idea that drivers and passengers will meet for pickup and drop-off at a common public location for example a large shopping mall, landmark or transit hub within the selected city. This requirement will prevent any confusion between users for trip itinerary details as well as reducing the number of stops the driver must make. Our user interviews confirmed that 100% of individuals interviewed believed that meeting in a public place is a valuable feature that would also make them feel safer for the initial meet up.

05

THE PRODUCT

Bringing Lyft Booking to the Web

Currently there is no option to book a ride on the web platform for Lyft, thus we developed a product page for the Long Distance feature on web. We wanted to insure that users could gather a good understanding of the application therefore the product page featured a section for Finding/Posting a Ride, a section to describe benefits of LyftLD to competitors, and a section for step-by-step tutorials of the app.

TRIP RESERVATIONS

Date Filters with Driver Profiles

User can browse relevant long distance rides base on their date and location preferences. Upon selecting their preferred trip, users have the ability to browse trip and driver details as well as message the driver. ​When the passenger requests the seat, they are brought to a checkout flow then redirected to a 'pending' confirmation page until the driver approves their request.

DAY OF THE TRIP

Trip Timelines and Updating Maps

Passengers are notified that their driver is 5 minutes away then redirected to an up to the moment map of their drivers location. ​Throughout the ride, both drivers and passengers have access to the map as well as a timeline of the trips remaining duration. Upon completion of the ride, passengers are prompted to leave a tip and reviews for their driver.

Reflections

Our final project garnered a lot of positive feedback from peers and the General Assembly community. As a team, we have considered pitching the idea to Lyft, if time allows for it due to varying schedules post graduation.

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Last Updated: January 2022