WeGo - Book a Ride
HERE WeGo is an app that makes city navigation effortless whether you would like to use public transportation or drive on your own. The app tells you everything about your journey before you head out. You can see the cost for public transit tickets, find places to park and know about traffic delays for any drive.
My Role
I received full ownership for UX in the WeGo app and I became the lead designer for all new features.
How can WeGo users
book a taxi using the app?
The Problem
The WeGo app provides various ways off getting around. A user can compare between the various options i.e. driving, taking a bus, walking end etc. there is no option for ordering a cab. If a user would like to order a taxi he or she will need to leave the app and use an external app to order the taxi. How can we enable the option of ordering a taxi via the without leaving the app?
The idea
Integrating the ability to order a taxi using the WeGo app
Challenges
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Needs to be simple and quick
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Shouldn’t clash with other features in the app
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Needs to pop out as a new feature, not being the main feature of the app
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Needs to give the feeling of “trust”
Target Audience
WeGo users, Male & Female, age 20-50. very popular in Europe
Research and inspiration
I began looking at the existing taxi ordering apps and navigation apps similar to WeGo and captured what I saw to be good ideas. I found that most of the main features in these apps are similar to WeGo's functionality. I also found that each app has a different starting flow. for example, some app begins the experience asking the user to define the "pickup location" and define a "destination". other apps skip the "destination" screen and only ask for "pickup location".
Findings
None of the navigation apps has the option of ordering directly from the app. All of the competitor's apps force the user to leave the app and open or download an external app to proceed with the taxi booking. My challenge is to find the right combination of flows and integrate it into WeGo.
Wireframes
There are three entry points to start the prosses of booking from the main screen of WeGo. My challenge here was to find a smart way to promote the booking of a taxi feature on the main screen of the app without overwriting the current and main use of the app, which is navigating and fining bus routs.
I decided to add a FAB (Floating Action Button) to the home screen which will lead the user to the booking flow. Selecting this route will lead the user to the taxi tab.
The user can also use the apps search bar which will result in suggestions of all results for the user to select what kind of transportation he/she will like to use. i.e. buses, bike, driving, walking and now cabs...
Here is my first draft for the wireframe...this flow will eventually change in the future due to new learnings along the way and changes in the products requirements :)
Initial UI design
The next step after creating the wireframes, I got a better understanding of the flow. I've presented the wires to my team and received excellent feedback and made the adjustments in the UI accordingly.
Initial UI design
The next step after the sketches faze, I got a better understanding of how the toolbar should behave and started testing a number of layouts for the bar.
Houston, we got a problem...
A short while after we released the taxi booking feature to 3 large cities in Europe (London, Berlin, Rome) we received feedback from users regarding a problem with the pickup location.
The problem was that users would set the pickup to "My location", the address that the system will receive was based on the lat long the GBS recognized. but in many cases, the address was not the correct one for the pickup. for example, if a user entered a building from address A, then relocated his position to a side of the building that was closer to another address, the GPS will show address B instead of address A, which is the actual address the user would like to be pickuped from.
UX solution
The ideal solution for this issue was to solve this from the backend by adjusting the data to be as accurate as possible.
Meanwhile, after doing some research, I came up with a solution the required adding a function where the user can adjust his pickup point manually. the downside to this solution is that it adds another step to the booking process. At this point, we had realized that this is adding a step may cost a bit more time to the user, but we did gain accuracy to the pickup location and resulted in avoiding frustration and reduced the number of order cancellations.
Adjusting the flow
Adding the step of the manual selection for the pickup location required me to create two flows in the app. one flow, for a user who starts their experience by using standard search i.e. from/to. and the second flow for a user who started the experience from tapping on the "Book a taxi" CTA.
Next steps...
The development team and I will work closely and make new changes. After we release the new pickup feature we will ask to get information from the data team and compare the number of cancellations and the number completed rides from before the changes and after. and learn to see if the changes we made reduced the number of cancellation and reached the goal of satisfaction towards the user. good luck to us ;)
Meanwhile...I started working on some marketing for the new feature...see ya in the app store ;)
