Traditional on-demand bus services for rural areas were implemented for years. Customers called the reservation centre and buses arrived 1 hour later to pick them up. No online or mobile booking was available. Moreover, there was a lot of manual effort required to dispatch the ride request to the driver and vehicle.
The perfect driver application. Know where my possible customers are, when and where they want to go and conveniently transport passengers. A smart solution which does not distract the driver.
Before I went straight into the research phase, I had to take my time to understand the nature of the problem, which made me pick out the keywords in the issue. These Action words helped in understanding the kind of product and environment I was solving
Decentralize, Gridlock Cities. Urban Mobility Solution, Shuttle Service, Consumers, Consumer Locations, Public Transportation, Shared Economy, Request Rides, Accept Request.
The purpose of this research was to understand the current situation, problems, constraints, people’s experiences, and opinions about public transportation. We used Lagos state, a state in Nigeria as our case study. Lagos State, identified is the biggest city in Nigeria with gridlocks, bad roads, and poor navigation system. It also has unmarked road networks.
I made extensive use of Qualitative Research to understand the problem, gain users' empathy, and develop personas to guide my storyboards, user journey, and wireframe. Below are the questions that I created for the research participants.
The results of the research provided me with an elaborate guide on what are the everyday challenges of the drivers. After gathering insights, I found fascinating ideas about their needs, wants, motivations, expectations, and current problems, which, as a result of the users' answers this helped me to create three personas.
Notes: Due to the instruction of the other interviewers, I was asked not to use their images, so I had to make use of just one of my interviewers.
“I face a lot of extortion from the head group of my association ”
We paid close attention to the consumer market - Asia, Latin America and Europe. Next, we researched the different live products under each of these categories.Solutions: carpooling, ride-sharing, smart shuttles, free-floating cars and scooter sharing.
After brainstorming, researching, talking to people and having a better understanding of who I would be designing for, it was time to make use of all these pieces of information to find a solution. I categorised and prioritised the most common and most pressing pain points and would be highlighting them with the various ways they can be solved.
That been said it would be essential to highlight two critical scenarios which the bus driver will be operating on, the part that I will be looking at is the on-demand service and pre-booking service
On-Demand Service
Pre-booking service
After a lot of consideration, I decided to focus on the driver to many riders which are the on-demand service (For passengers scattered along a route ). Creating a flow for the app allowed me to figure out each step of the users throughout the solutions.This flow is based on some assumption that the driver and the rider do have access to the internet neglecting any internet disruption.
I created a sketch user flow that will enable the drive to be able to pick multiple numbers of passengers with the help of reducing the cognitive overload of passengers request. I then decided to itemize the request in the form of a list.
I had to design the screens to focus majorly on the functionality and giving it less thought process on the visual design.attention to the visual flow.
The model is pretty simple. The Driver wakes up in the morning sets a specific location on the app, and the app begins to poll request from different riders within the area. The Driver sees all the request as a list not minding the names of the people because the most important thing for the Driver is to know the where, when and how long will it take to meet the Driver.
This approach assumes that there is a lot of clustered people within that location. While picking up each rider, there is a QR code which will be used for Driver to be to collect his money. The benefit of this model is to provide a solution where the Driver can make so much money without waiting for a specific group people (Pre Booking Service) to order the ride before he can leave the spot.
we are assuming that the driver as moved passed this stage of login into the app and also the on-boarding stage and I am going to focus only on the main screens.
The default screen right after the driver passes the credentials screen. This stage, the driver will have to tap on the button to show his currently online and the system sends out signals that his available.
The flow of this screen is for the rider to input the destination which will determine the driver route for the entire trip. The rationale behind putting the search field close to the bottom is because of proper usability.
“49% of users who use just one hand typically hold their phone in a variety of position”.
Drivers will need to quickly get the most recent destination or favourite destination to avoid retyping of the same address at all time.
This screen slides in the moment request begin to come in at this point the Drive taps on the request and that shows him all the request.
At this point, I was looking at what will be the best option for the Driver because while driving is not so concerned with map seeing all the request as a pin which will cause a whole lot of cognitive load. So I decided to put in a List View at this point the Driver top priority is to know the location (Where) and distance ( Time) with this all he has to do is to swipe to the right to accept the entire request. I decided to add an info button at this point the Driver would like to know the specific details of the particular passenger the Driver will be picking up and also know how far is the time of arrival.
Granular detail of the rider and I decided to have 2 versions to compare which screen will be situated for the Driver — looking at
version-1. I removed any dots to make it each Driver this way every rider is equally important, which means he can drive straight down to pick up the rider. I mentioned it earlier that the cognitive load for the Driver is significant that why I removed all the pinpoints.
Unlike version-2 there are a lot of passengers scattered around that will not be favourable for the Driver. Another major thing to watch out for in this screen is the confirm button this will inform the Driver to confirm every passenger at the point of pick up.
Granular detail of the rider and I decided to have 2 versions to compare which screen will be situated for the Driver — looking at version-1. I removed any dots to make it each Driver this way every rider is equally important, which means he can drive straight down to pick up the rider. I mentioned it earlier that the cognitive load for the Driver is significant that why I removed all the pinpoints. Unlike version-2 there are a lot of passengers scattered around that will not be favourable for the Driver. Another major thing to watch out for in this screen is the confirm button this will inform the Driver to confirm every passenger at the point of pick up.
Designing and researching the app has been imperative and rewarding experience thus far. Right from the beginning I had a major challenge how can I use my country transportation system to give a better perspective on how this app can work knowing fulling well that my country transportation system is really bad. This led me to deeper research and I was able to come up with an experience that can work within a grid lock city like nigeria.
