Getaround Case Study
Getaround Case Study
Product: App Feature
Duration: 3 weeks / 80 hours
Role: UX/UI Designer
Getaround is a car sharing app designed to give its users access to short term rentals in an easy, affordable way. Getaround currently doesn’t have an “upcoming trips” feature in app. This feature is an obvious choice and would improve the user experience.
It should be easy to access time-sensitive information within one touchpoint
Being one to push my limits with time and the amount I can get done each day, it doesn’t please me when it’s necessary to dig through multiple layers of an app to get the information I need –especially when it relates to a rental I’ve scheduled for “now”.
This tended to be the general consensus between personal experience and User Research as well:
Most people want between 1-3 touchpoints to get their trip information when renting a car.
To most people, anything over 3 touchpoints they would find unnecessary and annoying.
Some people would even like all information available in their calendar vs even having to come into the app for information like addresses etc.
Introducing: The “Upcoming Trips” feature
The solution for on-the-go renters who need to see where to go and what to do to pick up their rental NOW. The Upcoming Trip feature allows the Getaround app to be more intuitive about what is happening in real time and what is most important for the user in just ONE convenient touch point.
My Process
To start, it was important to Understand: how Does getaround’s Trip retrieval experience compare to other sites services?
In order to discover user needs and wants, I utilized Secondary Research and User Interviews.
I discovered that most car rental apps, especially mainstream, traditional car rental services with great reviews had an “upcoming trips” feature directly on the home page.
I also discovered that this feature was typically timed: the trip would begin to appear within a few days of the trip or reservation.
It also became clearer that restaurant reservation apps had a very similar model, and many had a very clean and intuitive way to display upcoming reservations that were a great example of increased convenience for the user with great reviews for usability.
I then used User Research to discover what users truly needed and wanted when it came to accessing their trip or reservation information.
One hurdle we ran into during User Research was the fact that most people hadn’t used the specific Getaround app before, so we leaned on users having used any app to rent a car or apps to reserve a table at a restaurant.
In this, we found that there were some do’s and don’t’s for a seamless user experience.
1. Do use less than 3 touchpoints to retrieve a trip, 1 is ideal.
2. Don’t use confirmation codes as a retrieval strategy – they are clunky and time consuming and require going to email to retrieve information.
3. Do utilize calendars and the ability to access critical information directly from a calendar event.
4. Do make booking for groups more seamless
There’s a Market for that
Through my interviews, I found there were two types of users:
Cindy, the casual car-renting professional who mostly books trips in her own city
Giorgio, the traveling professional who mostly rents cars based on what is convenient to his travel plans
The main features and functions interviewees highlighted as being important in their trip retrieval process were:
1. The ability to access their trip information in 1 click, ideally
2. Being able to access trip information from a calendar
3. The ability to easily book trips for a group
The main piece that defined these personas is they all had a need for easier retrieval of data
Based on User interviews, I created a series of statements to direct my work on the Getaround app:
It then became clear that in order to implement any of these features effectively, it would be important to prioritize and focus.
For the core experience, I chose to focus on a combination of Giorgio and Cindy’s personas by implementing a more streamlined flow for accessing Upcoming Trips while weaving in a feature that allows this information to be synced to Calendars .
This would support clarity and efficiency for the users as well as the business goals of customer retention, whereas focusing on Group Trips could be a way to add further value in the future.
Upcoming Trip
An Upcoming Trip feature on the homepage that allows users access to their trip information in 1 click.
add to Calendar
A calendar integration feature that syncs their trip information directly to their calendar.
Focusing on a seamless Upcoming Trip Experience would create the greatest value for the most users.
Within the three week timeframe, I chose to focus on the Upcoming Trip and Calendar Sync features. This helped the users have a more intuitive, personalized experience around the core functions of the app.
Calendar Sync
Upcoming Trip
IF I WAS Cindy, I WOULD WANT TO HIT one BUTTON AND know exactly where to pick up my car rental
Low Fidelity Wireframes
The Low Fidelity Wireframes gave a rough outline for when and where to place different elements + the components needed to make the user flows a reality.
Getaround’s brand captures the fun of travel and simplicity of an easy experience.
I kept the Getaround logo, purple, black, and gray color palette, and original photo treatments in my protoype in order to continue with a consistent brand identity
Working with an existing company presented the constraints of working with pre-ordained logos and brand colors.
Insights gathered from my rounds of user testing included:
Users found the prototype aesthetically pleasing without being overwhelming.
The process for each flow made sense to the users, the least user friendly part of the flow being the calendar pop-up, which at the time was not functioning intuitively.
There was also feedback around the “Upcoming Trip” card on the homepage not being obviously clickable.
The only necessary iterations involved resolving some prototype issue with the pop-up/overlay and adjustments to the “Upcoming Trip” card.
NExt Steps
Although it is recommended to focus on the current core experiences for now, as the app grows, offering a group trip feature will be worth looking into. This will allow Getaround to reach other markets of users who book cars for different reasons, such as business trips.
