User Research, Product Design, UI/UX Design, IxD Design, Design System
Spring 2024 (4 months)
Kathryn Kopec, Beam Sosothikul
Figma, Miro, Adobe Illustrator, AfterEffects, Photoshop
Revel is an all-electric ride-share service that was founded in 2018 in Brooklyn, New York. It offers eco-friendly transportation options in New York City and parts of New Jersey. The objective was to enhance the existing Revel app by introducing new features that address user challenges and improve overall functionality.
With Revel, the journey is more than just reaching the destination - it’s a personalized, convenient, and stress-free experience from start to finish.
Many commuters find their daily rides monotonous and lack motivation to engage with the transportation service they use. This results in decreased satisfaction, low loyalty, and missed opportunities for the brand to build a strong, interactive relationship with its users.
Before diving into the design phase, we began by breaking down the problem into key pain points. We then selected and evaluated the three most popular ride-share apps to understand how they addressed these issues.
We interviewed individuals matching our proto personas—professionals, students, travelers, and laborers—to identify key pain points.
Lack of Personalization
Users want a way to customize and personalize aspects of their ride experience, such as atmosphere and entertainment, especially during long-distance travel.
Accessibility Unfriendly
Ride-sharing apps often don’t cater to users with disabilities, making them hard to navigate. This leaves people with impairments unable to use the services fully.
Limited Engagement
The lack of gamified features and rewards reduces user motivation and loyalty. Apps that don’t provide incentives are at risk of losing users to more engaging competitors.
Based on our research, we created four personas that represented our target user groups, which we could use as references while designing the functionality of the app.
“I find joy in crafting innovative solutions at work, but nothing beats the warmth of family time”
"Exploring, remembering, and connecting are the core of a journey"
"Every choice we make today shapes tomorrow's world"
We crafted journey maps to empathize with the daily challenges users might face, allowing us to pinpoint opportunities for potential solutions. Each persona has its own goal and scenario.
We selected the most promising How Might We (HMW) questions and generated ideas for each to explore potential solutions.
We identified key user issues trough research and developed targeted solutions, providing a clear overview of our approach.
He needs a peaceful commute to work without disruptions, as they affect his focus and readiness for the day ahead.
Integrate ride customization and in-ride entertainment to align with his preference
Needs access to ride-sharing services with seamless integration between her rides and traveling to the airport
Have a seamless integration of traveling to and back from the airport using Revel
Struggles to get around due to vision impairment, making it difficult to schedule rides on ride share apps
Enable hands-free connection to each device for booking and notifications
Based on the key features we mapped out where the main categories & subcategories should be located on the app & how they need to be connected.
We created user task flows for all the features we added to the app to illustrate the various navigation paths a user may take to complete that task.
We created rough sketches for all the flows to map out the placement of elements throughout the app.
We iterated multiple times on the wireframes to ensure that the new features were as easy as possible for users to navigate, refining the structure based on feedback and usability testing.
Users found the ambiance profile feature complicated, leading us to add tooltips and brief descriptions for clarity.
The airport feature was overly complex; users preferred booking two separate rides over providing excessive information.
The “current ride” icon in the nav bar was confusing, with users mistaking it for the ride booking page.
The accessibility wireframes initially covered too many disabilities; we decided to focus on one to enhance universality.
Select from various profiles based on mood and comfort preferences, integrating functionalities from the Tesla app for enhanced customization. Adjust temperature, noise levels, and ambiance to create your desired ride environment.
Control your entertainment via Revel app. Select from curated playlists, podcasts, and audiobooks. Users can also adjust the temperature and volume to their liking.
Simply input flight details and have the app sync your airport arrival and departure times with your ride. Receive updates and automatic rescheduling.
Communicate with in app assistant Revel Assist via phone or apple watch to complete tasks with voice-only.
Revel Rings are achievement badges earned by completing milestones and activities, gamifying the ride experience with fun challenges and rewards.
The design system for Revel is a comprehensive toolkit that ensures consistency and efficiency across all user interfaces. It includes a set of reusable components, style guidelines, and design patterns that maintain a cohesive look and feel throughout the app.
Working with research is a cheat code
It helped uncover opportunities to explore and led to quick and informed design decisions.
Championing the user
Gaining a clear understanding of the user simplified the development process, making it easier to create targeted and effective solutions.
Prioritizing essentials over extras
We aimed to incorporate more features, but due to time constraints, we had to focus on the MVP. This decision helped us concentrate on essential features.