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Lyft is a platform connecting over 20.3 million users of active drivers with passengers across the United States and Canada. Yet according to Zippia, Lyft only has 29% share of sales in the U.S. rideshare market whereas Uber has 71%.
We began to ideate on a new feature to access an untapped user market.
We decided to create Lyft Long Distance (LyftLD), a centralized platform for users to access all available rides to their desired long distance destinations in a reliable and secure way.
Our goal was to expand Lyft's user base, build brand familiarity, and increase revenue.
End-to-End Design Process
Prototyping
User Research
3-week conceptual project
Figma
Protopie
Google Forms
4 UX Designers
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Users can toggle between Local and Long Distance rides straight from the home screen. Long distance are from city the city, users will be able to see of specific pick-up and drop-off locations while browsing.
Posts can be viewed in either a list or map format depending on what the user prefers. Trip cards feature the drivers details, rating, vehicle type and the price of ride.
Notice that each post details the exact pick-up and drop-off details so they can pick the most convenient locations for their needs.
Users are able to view drivers profile which includes a count of the trip the driver has completed, and an overall rating by fellow passengers based on timeliness, safety and communication.
In addition, users can directly message the drivers they are interested in ridesharing with to get further details before requesting the ride.
A minimum of minutes before pickup, users are notified of their drivers departure and arrival time at the selected meeting destination. Meeting information included is the drivers name, car brand and colour and a Lyft passcode.
During the ride, users are able to see the duration left in their trip along with a view of their fellow passengers.
The new product page gives users a stronger understanding of how long distance rides work and the ability book rides directly on the web.
This product page features 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.
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?
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
In additional to contextual inquiries, we researched competitors in the market to extract insights, and user pain points to create a clear benchmark to this new feature.
Audits were conducted on other platforms used to find and arrange rideshares, these include Kijiji, Facebook and Poparide.
I found that only one out of the three main competitors offered access to user background checks, consistent formatting to posts and pricing, as well as some visibility through the booking process.
Across the various available platforms, drivers are able to offer seats in their vehicles without any mandatory background checks or user review systems.
There is no required information for a ride posting, and with thousands of posts each day there is an overwhelming mashup of posts ranging from very vague options to incredibly in-depth.
Once a booking is confirmed, albeit usually through verbal confirmation, users have no further visibility to that status of their ride, changes to route or issues with pickup and drop-off.
Our primary user persona is the rider but rider and driver are both looking for similar things:
- Consistent information and regulated pricing
- An easy way to post/find rideshares
- Assurance of safety and reliability of riders & drivers
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.
Following feedback from 8 individual user interviews, it was clear one feature required more iteration. Our team narrowed our focus into the preliminary checkout flow designs.
6/8 users felt as though the checkout process seemed lengthy and the design was slightly incongruent to Lyft's current format, as it requires users to fill in payment details
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 pre-populated payment information.
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.
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.
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