Overview
Designed for Safe Ride
T3 Mobile Travel Platform offers car-sharing services in China and has become a notable competitor in the mobile transportation market. Aiming at offering safe trip, T3 framed its need in how SAFETY is highlighted in their car-hailing service. According to the client’s need and user research, our design solution are learning safety in gamification and redesign the driver profile to make travel experience safe and happy.
MY ROLE
UX designer, worked with T3 PM and user research team. Responsible for redesigning the “Safety features” for T3 1.0.10 version, led the visual design.
DURATION
Dec 2019 - Jan 2020
IMPACT
"Your project shows the deepest consideration on safety issue."
Able to benefit more than 3.2 million users.
ABOUT T3
T3 is a powerful competitor with total investment of 1.45 billion dollars.
3.2 million registered users
Operated with 12,000 vehicles with more than 200,000 daily orders.
Safety rises as a public priority in the car-hailing industry
T3 Car-hailing Platform
T3 was launched in 2019 as a new force in car-hailing market. Having seen the safety issues in the industry, T3 places SAFETY as its top principle. It leverages the innovative V.D.R system and its Vehicle Network to protect users' safety.
T3 Vehicle Network System
Needs: solve safety problems with T3's safety solutions and make safety advantage as its competitive edge.
We were asked to optimize T3's safety experience. The goals were to effectively protect users' safety by highlighting T3's safety features, and attract more users to choose T3's services with this brand image.
Conducted Research
I learned from...
Documents
Product manager
Competitors
Users
Desktop Research - status quo and social context of car-hailing industry in China
Fierce competition calls for uniqueness
"In order to have more market share, ride-hailing brands had to build unique product and services in recent years.There are reasons to believe they may fight even harder for market share in the future."
China's Ride-hailing Market Dynamics, 2020Gender discrepancy -female tend to choose B2C
According to the statistic data, we noticed that female users are tend to choose B2C platforms instead of C2C, which may related to safety concern.
China's Ride-hailing Market Dynamics, 2020Passenger safety has become a public issue
The question about how to protect passengers not only brought a fraught time for all the ride-sharing companies but also challenged the public attitude to car-pooling services and their safety awareness.
Check with PM - to better understand the product landscape qualitatively and quantitatively
Vehicle.Driver.Road system (V.D.R system)
- connect vehicle, driver and road for a comprehensive safety network
Road, vehicle, and driver are three most important factors in safety-related issues. T3 connected those three factors in an integrated network to better monitor trips. T3 is using innovative equipments on users' side, such as in-car alarm buttons. There are even more equipments running backend to track and protect safety.
Users know T3's safety strength by alarm button
Using price strategy for new customers
Competitive Analysis - dive into the current market to understand underlying safety concerns
1. Safety features are heavily rely on apps.
2. Homogeneous safety features in most China's platforms.
3. Lack necessary information to guide users take action.
User Interview - to understand how users feel about safety and uncover underserved needs
Understanding how users react to safety issue in real car-hailing situations
We interviewed 15 users that includes both T3 users and general car-hailing services users. The interviewee covered both gender, from 21 to 49 years old. The goals were to know how people feel about the present T3 safety solutions, and what means safety to general passengers?
Research Insights - synthesized the takeaways from conducted research
1. Demanding safer service
Safety is an important issue in car-hailing service. Users want safe service and tend to regard safety as a factor when choosing the platform.
2. Unfamiliarity of T3 safety features
Apart from the traditional safety features, most users are not familiar and didn't notice the T3 safety solutions, including VDR system, alarm system, and other innovative equipments.
3. Grey area - "Am I safe? Am I not?" - Cognitive Load
Users value efficiency during car-hailing. However, most of the safety features used at present need pay attention and make decision.
4. Efficiency is the NO.1 tag for the car-hailing service
Users value efficiency during car-hailing. However, most of the safety features used now need users to pay attention.
5. Price sensitive - price matters more than safety
Although safety is important, many users would still prefer cheaper service. Merely selling safety strengths has limited effect on increasing user base.
Flow of car-hailing
what are users thinking when taking rides?
HMW1: how might we make passengers feel safe with minimum efforts?
We want to make full use of the T3 safety features and make it actionable in order to keep safety with lowest efforts for users to protect safety.
Design strategies: make better use of V.D.R system and vehicle network to protect safety and minimize user cognition load for a user-friendly experience.
Consistency
Efficiency
Simple
On-time
Keep the experience consistent. Follow the existing visual effect.
Design the actionable, reliable and effective safety solutions.
Require no extra efforts and protect safety with minimum cognitive load.
Provide on time and actionable reaction when facing danger.
Solutions:
Clear and straight forward information - Give information that user want
Efficient action - Take effective action just when it needed
1
Problems of the current driver profile
The current info card ONLY shows car info, driver's surname, tiny rate and trip amount. User can neither see photo of the driver nor any information about driver's driving skills.
Design solution: Add professional badges on the driver's profile - Change the implicit to explicit
UI Exploring
We explored the user interface with several versions and finally decided on the left one because there is too much information for users to process. In the final version, we grouped the information in different sections to decease cognitive load.
2
Problems of the current [On the way] page
Hard to let users know WHEN and HOW to take WHAT action.
Design solution: Auto detection leveraging VDR technology - Save human cognition load
VDR system can auto-detect the driver and car on the backend.
Colors indicate different status - safe, moderate, action needed.
Text label describes the situation.
Buttons guide users to take action.
HWM2: how might we attract new users with unique safety services?
How to combine safety uniqueness and other effective business strategies to increase user base?
Business strategies: combine safety strength with other commercial strategies, to make the trip safe and economical.
3
Problems of the current safety instruction
Users have less interest on dry texts and advertisement.
We are thinking of a more efficient way to educate users with safety.
It should:
1. be prominent
2. get to users at a proper touchpoint
3. be time-saving
4. be fully controllable by users
5. b engaging and interesting
6. be rewarding
Design solution: Safety tutorial for coupon - make the trip safe and economical
Use a popup modal to replace the original one. The touchpoint is chosen at the moment when users have got on the vehicle (got job done)
The first page would tell users what it is about; how long does it take; and what is the reward.
Users can decide when and if they are going to start.
Simplify the information by introducing 3 most important points.
Using illustration for easy understanding
We've learned from the PM that physical alarm button is the most straight forward feature to deliver safety.
Using micro-interaction to teach the functionality of the button.
Get the coupon or discount after finishing the tutorial
Design Walkthrough
Driver profile redesign
Add professional badge on the driver profile
Problem solved:
1. Users want to know more driver’s information when they need it.
2. Client wants to highlight their safety technology
Auto-detection
Using technology embedded to auto detect safety level.
Problem solved:
1. Users want to pay the minmum efforts on safety detection.
2. Make better use of the T3’s technology
Safety tutorial for coupon
Teach and encourage users to learn T3’s safety solution and attract more users.
Problem solved:
1. Users prefer both safe service and cheap service.
2. Increase users’ familiarity with T3’s innovative safety features
Evaluation & Next Step
Feedback from the client
"Your group shows the most profound thought in understanding the safety issue among all the groups and you have given several exciting solutions.
People treat safety in carsharing quite passively. They start to think of safety when they are really threatened by danger. I appreciate your design that innovatively highlights T3’s safety advantages."
Impact and Next Step
The solutions can benefits 3.2 + MILLION users.
We got positive feedback from the user testing of DRIVER PROFILE. Users think that it is very useful and can improve their confidence in taking T3's ride.
Many users are willing to recommend T3 to others because of the safety advantage. It would benefit company's long-term goal on expanding market.
Next step: In-depth usability test with the new features
Qualitative feedback
Possible quantitative metrics that can be used to evaluate success:
Click-through rate of the quiz
Completion rate of the quiz
Increase of order completion rate in night
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