Project Description
As one of RideAmigos' clients, iGoladera wants to provide their service as a way to improve the commuting experience and reduce the number of vehicles on the road – reducing traffic congestion and pollution. They currently have a website for commuters to find and evaluate transportation options. In this design project, our team was hypothetically hired by RideAmigos senior management for a limited engagement to help modify or redesign the interface to improve their product’s effectiveness.
An app design that takes a unique approach to the daily commute activity of people by encouraging them to opt for carpool as an alternative mode of transportation via social collaboration and increased accessibility.
This project was done in collaboration with RideAmigos in Rapid design course, Sept 2013.
Concept
The design mainly consists of two features to encourage people to opt for carpools: 1) Image sharing for promoting social collaboration 2) QR codes for increasing carpool accessibility and outreach.
Process
We started this project by doing a design critique of the already existing iGoLadera.com website while simultaneously conducting informal interviews with daily commuters to find out 'What they think about their commute activity and alternative modes of transportation'. Most of them considered their commute as a mundane activity. Through problem faming and research insight analysis, we decided to approach the 'daily commute' space as an opportunity for people to explore their city together. We sketched several designs that motivated them to consider carpool as a daily commute option. While re-iterating the design, we decided to transform the existing website into an app in order for the people to collaborate socially - explore, discover and share experiences on the go. We then created an interactive prototype of the final design in Axure software and conducted usability test with two participants. For the final deliverable, we documented our entire design process and communicated the design in the form of a story.
Methods
Informal interviews, design critique, literature review, sketching, story boarding, prototyping and documentation.
Duration
Five days
Team mates
Sijie Yang, Yizhou Pan
My Contribution
I mainly did the research for this project.
I conducted primary research and did literature review to support our design core. I conducted usability testing of two participants and put together the entire design document as our final deliverable.