Hitch Hiking Revamped
Project Logistics
Timelime
2 weeks
My Role
UX Designer
Our Team
Conor Wylock
Jaime Huang
Project Overview
College students around the United States attend college far from home, with many in remote locations and generally inaccessible by public transportation. As a result, many students have difficulty securing a ride between school and home, in effort to make it home during school breaks.
Our team researched how college students currently arrange travel back and forth between college and home, with the goal of improving the experience of finding a ride via a responsive website.
The Challenge
Many college students have difficulty traveling between school and home during breaks because they don’t have access to a car and have different exam schedules to plan around. As a result, students get stressed out trying to figure out how to get home while also studying for exams.
How might we help college students, who do not have cars, schedule travel between home and school without taking away from their study time?
Understanding the Users
During the research phase of our project, we wanted to learn more about our target audience to make sure our designs would solve their needs. We interviewed 6 participants who were either in college or recent college graduates in order to understand their goals, needs and pain points in regards to carpooling between school and home.
To find a ride, college students currently try to ask friends, reach out to members in their clubs, and use facebook carpool groups. But this is all time intensive and takes away from time they should spend studying for finals.
Designed by Freepik
User Research Insights
We determined common themes about our target audience by pulling information directly from interviews. We learned that college students:
Safety and Familiarity
Prefer riding with people they know to feel safe.
Social Aspect
Enjoy a social atmosphere in the car.
Travel Preferences
Have specific preferences such as driving in daylight, eating in the car, and music tastes.
Scheduling
Have difficulty finding a ride around their exam schedule.
Our Target User
We gathered the themes and insights found from the user interviews to visualize a persona that embodies our target audience.
Meet Freddie, a college student who goes to school at James Madison University in Virginia and is trying to find a ride home to New Jersey for winter break that works with his exam schedule.
Freddie’s Journey
We dove into our persona even further, by creating a day in the life view of his emotional rollercoaster as he attempts to solve his problem of finding a ride home. This helped us identify the most stressful points of his process and the opportunities to improve the process.
To find a ride he currently tries to ask friends, fraternity members, and use facebook carpool groups. But this is all time intensive and taking away from his study time. He experiences many lows each time he tries to find a ride through another avenue, to no avail. After a lot of time and effort, he secures a ride and goes back to studying.
Prioritized Features
To directly address the insights we derived from our user research, we prioritized a list of features that we believed we could design for the minimum viable product, or MVP.
Safety and Familiarity
Group students from the same school by verifying their school email and include a detailed profile for each driver and rider.
Social Aspect
Create direct messages between the rider and driver and view the other confirmed passengers.
Travel Preferences
View the driver’s list of amenities and preferences.
Scheduling
Select date of travel through a calendar view.
Sketches
To kick off our design and gain different perspectives, we held a design studio session with our development team that involved strictly timed sketching.
Design Iterations
With the goal of optimizing the intuitiveness and aesthetics of the design, we iterated on the mobile web view multiple times. Once we solidified the mobile design, we created a desktop version.
Mid-Fidelity
After the design studio session with our development team, we gathered our low-fidelity sketches and proceeded to create a clean, grey-scale mobile web design. We included our must have features and pulled layout ideas from the design studio session, such as a list view for the Select a Ride screen.
Hi-Fidelity
We moved from mid-fidelity to hi-fidelity by adding color and branding.
Hitch hiking and carpooling are old school concepts, so we branded ourselves as a revamped retro tool.
Desktop Design
After iterating on the mobile design, we created a desktop version of the site. With more screen real estate, we were able to play with the display of information a bit while making sure there was a clear connection between the mobile and desktop views.
Test, then Test Again
To evaluate our designs for functionality and intuitiveness, we conducted usability testing of the mid- and hi-fidelity mobile web designs with six participants. We gave them three tasks to complete, which a typical user would do within the site:
Intro: Your name is Freddie Doe and you are a freshman at James Madison University. You need to find a carpool home to Patterson, NJ for winter break.
1) Your friend tells you about a website for college carpools, called Hitch. Sign up for Hitch and start a new profile.
2) Your last exam is on December 16th. Find the earliest carpool that will take you from James Madison University to NJ on December 17th.
3) Before you book, you want to learn more about the person whose car you will be getting into. Find out more about this person and book your carpool.
The Most Difficult Task
Participants had the most difficultly with task 3 during both the mid-fi and hi-fi usability tests. In mid-fi, participants did not notice the web browser back button to exit the Driver Information screen and navigate back to the Ride Information screen to continue to “Request a Ride”.
To address this in hi-fi we updated the Driver Information screen to be a slide up overlay on the Ride Information screen, so that users could easily navigate back by sliding the overlay down. This was in effort to give the user more context as to where they were within the site.
While this seemed like a good solution, based on the second round of testing, most users didn’t notice the Driver Information overlay and instead tapped on “Contact Driver”. In our next iteration we plan to start the overlay higher on the screen to grab users' attention.
Introducing Hitch,
a responsive website that helps college students catch rides home.
Our Features
Search for Rides
Students can search for rides based on their pick-up and drop-off locations are well as a date that works with their exam schedule.
View Available Rides
After putting in their search criteria, they will get a list of potential carpools to join, which they can sort by price, date, or distance from their destination.
Carpool Information
Once they select a specific ride, they can view the ride logistics, confirmed passengers, and driver information. They also can contact the driver and request a ride.
Driver’s Information
Students can get familiar with their driver by viewing their bio, a recent review, and the carpool amenities. The green checkmark indicates they are verified and go to the same school.
Desktop Screens
Our Features in Action
Click play to view the mobile web prototype.
Click play to view the desktop web prototype.
Next Steps
Moving forward, we would like to continue to iterate on our design, including raising the Driver Information overlay. We would also like to additional features to enhance the user’s experience such as a map feature to show the trip route and scheduled stops, and a return trip option so users can schedule a drive to and from home with the same driver.
Overall, we strongly believe Hitch will solve college students struggles with finding a carpool home, leaving them more time to study for finals.
Who wants to hitch a ride?