What we needed to accomplish with our research was to see if there is even a need or want to have this technology available. Each member of the team has each experienced scenarios where we wished we weren't tied down to our vehicles and wanted them moved without having to worry about it. We needed to see if other people have experienced similar sentiments.
Have you ever felt "tied down" to your vehicle?
We defined feeling "tied down" as a feeling of personal responsibility in regards to your vehicle. For example, have you ever found yourself in a situation where you couldn't do something you wanted because of your car? Or perhaps a situation where you couldn't leave your car behind?
We found that there are a number of reasons when someone could feel tied down. The most common reasons involving alcohol and weather.
Asking 6 interviewees a myriad of personal questions similar to survey provided us with some key insights. Again, we needed to know, is there even a need for this? It turns out that many people have experienced similar scenarios where they wish they weren't tied down to their vehicles.
Also, a valuable piece of information we need to find was how could we make people feel comfortable with the idea of another person driving their vehicle? We realize this is a difficult task to accomplish, but we would do our best to ensure a high level of trust in the professional drivers tasked with transporting personal vehicles.
"I generally don't mind someone else driving my car as long as their some level of familiarity or trust."
"Having to worry about moving my car or where it's going to be really takes me out of the moment I'm in."
"I really wish we had our car avaible to us after a concert. ALL of the ubers were taken or really expensive!"
"If I'm going out to drink, I have to go home and park my car, get an uber, get another uber going home. This causes like a 30 minute delay!"
"I always have to plan ahead if I'm going out. I usually ask friends or family for a ride."
"I hate the lack of freedom when I'm out with my car somewhere."
We determined that it is important to come up with more reasons to use this app. Although most people talked about wanting an app like CARGO when they were out and drinking alcohol, we are confident that there are other practical reasons to use CARGO as well.
Our user persona represents this. She drove herself to the eye doctor and finds out that she will need to have her eyes dilated. She is now in a predicament where she will either have to choose reschduling her appointment to a later date, or going through with her procedure and finding someone else to drive her home.
Her car is in the parking lot, so she will either need someone to get a ride to the eye doctor, or she will have to go back and pick it up another time. None of options are ideal, but CARGO would prove to be a perfect alternative in these kind of situations.
All this is showing is Caroline's feelings and potential opportunities as she determines what to do about her car at the eye doctor. At first, she is upset because she didn't plan on having her eyes dilated, only to be further antagonized by what she is going to do with her car.
Then, a kind nurse tells her about CARGO, which Caroline sees as a potential solution to her problem. She decides to download the app and is relieved, but then she wonders "How can I trust this stranger to drive my car?"
This is a great opportunity for the onboarding screens to mention that all drivers have passed certifications and requirements, and that there is even a rating system. This makes her feel better, and is relieved that she can get her procedure done AND also go home with her car.
We quickly realized that because of our time constraints, we would have to focus on accomplish at least one basic task that CARGO could accomplish.
However, in future iterations, we envision that CARGO will need a both a Driver app and a standard User app. The driver app willl be specifically for drivers as they navigate finding jobs available in their area.
We soon discovered that there are also limitations in the idea of having someone transport a user's vehicle without the user actually being present.
That being said, we believe that there are potential solutions to this, such as creating a transponder type of car lock that would have to be easily installed to give drivers access to vehicles when they need to. This transponder could potentially be part of a VIP package that subscribers get access to.
Another option would be to allow users to voluntarily have drivers pick up their keys and give it to them, but the vehicle's exact location would have to be known.
This is clearly a much bigger project than we had time for, but I am optimistic that this idea could be brought to fruition with more time and investment. Again, for the scope of the this project, we decided we would focus on at least building the option to have users ride home with their vehicle, as it is a simpler flow as well as the basis of what differentiates this app from traditional ridesharing apps.
Again, because we were developing a very complicated app within a small window of time, we needed to make sure that we could deliver in an Minimum Viable Product. With the decision to map out at least the option for users to have their personal vehicles moved with users riding along, we needed to make sure that our usability testing reflected that.
We ended up creating three tasks that were critical to the app as a whole, and especially for our user flow. They are listed as follows:
While our tasks were successful for the most part, there were 2 critical issues that needed immediate resolving for the next iterations. The most critical was that the vehicle registration process was inhibited by a nonfunctioning button. Users were stuck on the page without being able to proceed!
The other big issue was that all users reported the onboarding screens were set to transition very rapidly, not allowing any time to see the important things that CARGO can do. This issue, as well as the non functioning button, were immediately and successfully fixed in the next iteration. Aside from those 2 issues, users recommended we do minor changes to the UI, and we have also implemented those in the next iteration.
After implementing our changes for the next iteration of the prototype, we conducted another round of successful usability testing. All users were able to make it to the end of our task flow without any issues.
There is much work to be done moving forward, but I am confident that the effort will be worth it. This has the potential to be a valid competitor of Uber or Lyft, and it offers a service that currently does not exist in an efficient way. For the next steps, we need to design a pathway for both the traditional rideshare option, and the option to have a driver transport a vehicle while the user will not be going with it. However, this can be added at a later date once CARGO is more established. The next major step is to build the Driver's app, so that people can become certified and start making money using CARGO.
We were asked some great questions when giving our presentation to stakeholders. This includes, "How would a driver get back after dropping off somebody's vehicle? They no longer have a car, so how does it work?" That is indeed a fantastic question, and I have a couple of solutions.
One possible solution could be to have drivers can set up a radius that they would be comfortable working in for their session. Anything outside the radius can go to other drivers. Another solution that could work in tandem with the first could be that all CARGO drivers get free rides after dropping a car off. They can rideshare to another location, and the CARGO driver that picks them up will still be paid for their service. This could create a company culture that relies heavily on teamwork and collaboration.
In the end, due to our limited time constraints, we were only able to design through one major task flow, but this idea has potential. I am excited to keep working on it and find more team members who could bring this idea to fruition.
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