Campus Carpool Program Improvement
Overview
Program Type: Mobile App Redesign
Timeline: Oct 2020 - Dec 2020 | Data Analysis, user research (Teamwork)
Jan 2021 | 2 weeks, UX/UI design (Individual)
Tool: Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Python, Excel
Context:
The parking and Transportation office at UC Berkeley (Berkeley P&T) has been running a carpool parking permit program to encourage university students, staff, and faculty to carpool to campus. In the summer of 2019, additional rules were issued by Berkeley P&T that carpool permit holders are now required to log at least eight times carpool trips per month to maintain their permits on Berkeley Moves! platform.
Design Process
Function priority
Usability Test Data feedback
Define Problem Conduct Strategy Build Prototype Design Test
Client's Feedback
Persona
Experience Map
Scenairo
Information architecture
Key Features
Data analysis
Feedback &
Surveys
Client's Goal
Problem Space
Our team analyzed the current users' behavior and found there's a poor implementation of the new policy (usage of carpool and trip log feature) shown as the following:
How might we encourage people to use new features?
1. Low percentage
of active users
2. Inactive usage
of the trip log feature
3. Poor user growth
of carpool program
Project Goal
The current carpool program is hosted on the RideAmigos platform with the following goals:
1) Push trip log feature
Verify that the carpool permits are being used appropriately and truthfully.
2) Promote user growth
Provide a reference for future carpool program planning and development.
3) Encourage active trans.
Reduce on-campus traffic and implement active transportation
to work towards UC Berkeley’s sustainability goals.
What we already know/have?
1. Complaints caused by the new policy:
2. User usage data
3. Berkeley moves! Improve reference suggestions
What we haven’t know/have?
2. Who would like to join the program?
What characteristics/pain points/ demands do they have which is different from current users?
1. Who are the current users?
What barriers new policy brought to them?
How to encourage them to use new features?
To figure out the characteristics of current users and difficulties they come up with the new carpool rules, our team conducted user research on people's behavior, demand and pain point to figure out these unknowns.
User Research
User Journey
Based on the feedback provided by users through email and Apple store review, I developed the following journey map. There are mainly four stages through the carpool process:
Stage 1) Trip schedule
Pain point: Already share rides with others
Stage 2) Amigo connection
Pain point: Safety concern sharing rides with strangers
Stage 3) Carpool
Pain point: Difficulty coordinating time with strangers
Stage 4) Trip log and rewards
Pain point: Time-consuming trip log
![新体验地图【en].png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/316506_09c42a24219947d899f78a40698bb44b~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_1305,h_386,al_c,q_90,enc_avif,quality_auto/%E6%96%B0%E4%BD%93%E9%AA%8C%E5%9C%B0%E5%9B%BE%E3%80%90en%5D.png)
I found there're two different pain points for not using the carpool feature.
People with permanent carpool partners
“Carpool permit holders are already taking multiple people to campus.”
“Will this program take background checks for each user?”
People with no permanent carpool partners
“How to set time if my time is fluctuating day to day?”
“Am I expected to take other riders both to and from campus on a given day??”
To figure out the corresponding persona and demand for each type of user, I conducted the user data analysis to draw the user profile.
Insight
01
User Type:
Membership Composition
Staff and faculty take up 58% of users, more than students. Nearly half of fac/staff own carpool parking permits but only 10% of students purchase carpool permits.
02
Commute mode:
Giant demand for RT tool
Carpooling is the dominant commute method for current users, while other commute modes such as Uber/Lyft or real-time ride-matching service are also needed especially for students.
03
Potential users:
Living within 2 miles
Students living within 2 miles, with roommates are missing in the current program. However, this commuting distance has flexible transportation options and a large number of dormitory gatherings.
Evidence
Persona
I summarized current user data and compared current user behavior with the whole campus user to find the difference, which identified as the potential market, which is as follows:
Current users
Potential users
1. Unwillingness
to share rides with strangers due to safety concern and many of them already have permanent ride partners
2. Difficulty
to share rides with strangers due to safety concern and many of them already have permanent ride partners
New challenge acknowledged
What we hope to achieve is to match people sharing same commute mode to relieve traffic load.
Followed the strategy above, people used to walk would join the carpool program and campus traffic won’t decrease.
Design
Prelimary approach
Recognized pain points above, I built low-fidelity prototypes including the following functions:
Low-fi Prototype
Feedback
I invited ten people to conduct usability tests on the preliminary design strategy and collected their feedbacks.
Revised information architecture
Final interface
For new users: Real-time matching platform
Indicate surrounding users who plan to depart through the image of Berkeley bear plus travel mode.
Click to view the destination and contact
Choose status as going home through one button.
The departing status will be auto-closed after 15 min, indicating a failure match.
Recommend the best match
Set user's home & campus address as the default
Merge original six transportation modes to 3
Identity filter
Display departure time & distance for reference
Publish commute demand
For current users: intuitive trip log workflow
Feature I: Auto tracking
Feature II: Group editing
Feature III: Navigation
HTA Framework for evaluation
I invited 10 users to scale their satisfaction with the opening page, understanding of core function, and record the time for one-time trip log to examine whether this design strategy helps improve the ease of use and effectively optimize the trip log process
Result
Conclusion
1. Effectively improve the ease of use
It significantly reduces the learning cost of core functions for first-time users and improved trip log efficiency.
2. Follow-up data monitoring plan
This test only included the happiness, task completion, and acceptance willingness of the 10 users tested. If the product developed, I will pay attention to the participation of carpool reminders and the retention of non-carpool users.
Key learning
1. Be a critical challenger
At the beginning of this project, I was stuck in the gamification strategy which is suggested by the project manager. However, I found it’s not an ideal solution after analysis and research. Validation of hypotheses really matters rather than a waste of time.
2. Be flexible for App development
According to the original project proposal, the developer team tagged the chat feature with a low priority. However, it’s a critical factor to improve user experience. To solve that issue, I designed two versions, one for a short-term version and another detailed one for later development.