Runi project: Carpool App for college students

Through an application, we will provide the university network with the opportunity to organize shared trips, satisfying the needs of the university network.

Team

5 graphic designers ( 2 designers specialized in UX/UI, 2 specialized in advertising, 1 specialized in illustration).

Role

UX/UI Designer, in charge of prototyping and usability tests.

Duration

3 months

Problem Statement

College students often face high transportation costs and lack sustainable and accessible mobility options. There is a need for them to be provided with a safe and reliable transportation solution.

Stage 1. Emphatising / User Research

Engaged with 28 students, some through in-depth one-on-one interviews, a focus group and a world café to gather comprehensive insights into their commute habits, preferences, and frustrations with current transportation options.

Problem Statement

College students often face high transportation costs and lack sustainable and accessible mobility options. There is a need for them to be provided with a safe and reliable transportation solution.

Stage 1. Emphatising / User Research

Interview Insights

In a classroom with 20 students, 19 would use the app as passengers and only 1 as a driver, we met more passengers than drivers.
Both user profiles were afraid of experiencing an unsafe or life-threatening situation.
The users who would use the app as passengers mentioned several times that they would like to be able to choose the gender of their driver.
Some users commented that they were nervous about having to interact with people they did not know, some of them were introverted and had doubts about this.

Stage 2. Defining

The previous exhaustive research phase highlighted the need for more safe, accesible and collaborative transportation solutions, leading to the development of detailed user personas representing the app's target audience.

Primary Users:

CUAAD students who use public transport to travel between the university and their destinations, are pedestrians, use bicycles, etc.
CUAAD students who have their own personal vehicles and want to save a little to pay for gasoline.

Objectives & goals

Through an application, we will provide the university network with the opportunity to organize shared trips, satisfying the needs of the university network.

Our main goals:
- Affordable costs that do not affect their budgets
- Trustworthy people because they are verified to be part of the community
- Space and comfort because they go by private car
- Time savings because they no longer make connections

Stage 3. Ideating

Formulated a design strategy that prioritizes a simplified flow diagram and mapped out a user journey to visualize how users would interact with the proposed features, fostering a collaborative environment and promoting engagement through a friendly interface.

Stage 4. Prototyping

Wireframing: Developed over 16 wireframes for various app screens, meticulously planning each element of the user interface to ensure intuitive navigation and a seamless carpooling experience. These wireframes served as the foundation for the app's structure, focusing on facilitating easy access to content and interactive features.

Prototyping: Utilized advanced features in Figma to create interactive prototypes, enabling realistic user interactions.
UI Design: Crafted a visually appealing and accessible user interface, selecting a color palette that promotes safety, collaboration and accesibility, alongside typography that improves readability across various devices.

Stage 5. User Feedback & Refinement

Facilitated user testing with a diverse group of app users, gathering insightful feedback on the design. This phase was crucial in identifying unforeseen usability issues and validating the effectiveness of the new design elements.

During usability testing we noticed the following points for improvement:

At the beginning, when they set up their profile of preferences and hobbies, they'll only be able to choose from three options in each category.
To inform the users about how will provide security, accesibility and comfort, an onboarding screens when they open the app will help us to make more enfasis in this aspects, because the newsletter in the home section was not seen when they navigated the app.
Improve the buttons for both passengers and drivers, at the waiting to meet driver or passenger screen.

3 phones, 2 floating and one holded by hand

What I learned from this project:

A multidisciplinary team makes a difference. For this project I had the opportunity to work with designers from other specialities, which helped by having different points of view and ways of solving our users' needs. We all helped to improve the app by giving feedback based on our strengths as designers.
If you don’t know something, the internet is a great place to find it. Part of my job was to work on the prototype, and I encountered a lot of new challenges. Since I wanted to make the work the most practical way as possible, I searched for tutorials that would help me designing whatever element I need to use frequently in the prototype.
Organization skills saved me from burn out. When the project started I was unemployed, but at the middle of it I found myself having only half of my day available to work in the app. My whole team was in the same position as I, so we distributed every task in categories according to our strenghts and that made all of the difference. It was so efficent that we finish days before the deadline.

Skills I learned:

Check out the prototype!

What I learned from this project:

A multidisciplinary team makes a difference. For this project I had the opportunity to work with designers from other specialities, which helped by having different points of view and ways of solving our users' needs. We all helped to improve the app by giving feedback based on our strengths as designers.
If you don’t know something, the internet is a great place to find it. Part of my job was to work on the prototype, and I encountered a lot of new challenges. Since I wanted to make the work the most practical way as possible, I searched for tutorials that would help me designing whatever element I need to use frequently in the prototype.
Organization skills saved me from burn out. When the project started I was unemployed, but at the middle of it I found myself having only half of my day available to work in the app. My whole team was in the same position as I, so we distributed every task in categories according to our strenghts and that made all of the difference. It was so efficent that we finish days before the deadline.