Introduction

It’s me again with another case study from my ongoing UX/UI Design Bootcamp at Ironhack Berlin. This was an individual project for which executed in four days. This time, we had to apply design thinking methodologies to design a non-existing feature for an existing app. Each feature was randomly assigned.

I had to work on a feature that would enable Blablacar users to book regular trips. By regular trips I mean trips that are often made between different locations.

Let’s first take a look at Blablacar.

Blablacar

BlaBlaCar is a carpooling marketplace. Founded in 2006 in France, the app and website connects drivers and passengers willing to travel together between cities and share the costs of the journey.

Blablacar simply acts as a broker, a bridge between drivers and riders. For every booking, it receives a commission.

In terms of competition, every type of transport service that could take the user from one point to another could be considered a competitor.

Research

For the following project, the research methods I applied were guerrilla research techniques, online surveys and questionnaires to several users.

The main reasons why people use carpooling like Blablacar are the economical cost and the velocity in comparison with public transport. In certain cases, carpooling is even the only way for some users to get to their destination.

Indeed, carpooling users travel to the same destinations rather often. This leads me to believe the feature I was designing could be useful to users and should be considered being implemented by Blablacar.

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Riders who often travel between the same destinations can’t book regular tickets. I believe that regular trips will make it easier and faster to the places they travel often. We could measure the success of the feature by analysing the value generated by regular trip bookings through the app.

The feature could benefit users like Ducas Dubois. Who’s Lucas Dubois? The persona I was able to create based on my user research.

Lucas is a 23 years old French student. He studies Finance at the University of Montpellier. Lucas lives with his parents in a rural area.

Lucas needs to commute a few times a week to attend his classes in the city. He has no drivers and is extremely limited by public transport. Therefore, carpooling is his best option to get where he needs to. However, Lucas has to book a trip each time, which costs him time and energy.

The user journey for someone like Lucas would look something like this:

• User needs to get to a certain destination on a regular basis.
• Doesn’t use private or public transport for its’ duration, unavailability and cost.
• User finds out online about carpooling. Downloads an app and proceeds to book trip to selected destination.
• User notices the unnecessary need to repeat a booking each time per trip.
• The user finds about Blablacar and the possibility to book a regular trip. Books several trips in a single click.
• The user saves energy and time while booking his regular trips, which results in an overall better travel experience.

The sitemap would be based on the current flow existing in the Blablacar app. The main difference would occur in the initial stage, in which the user could chose between a single trip or a regular trip. Each of the following steps would accommodate the initial users choice — location selection, dates selection, time selection, driver selection, trip information and trip confirmation.

When designing in different fidelities, I tried to replicate common user interface elements found on other transportation apps.

After analysing Blablacar, I stuck as much as I could to the current interface design of the app. I reused and replicated everything I could. My goal was to deliver a design which would be consistent and easy to implement.

In my design process , I also considered the very likely scenario in which a driver did not drive in one of the selected dates by the user. In that case, the user could book certain rides with a driver and keep on searching for another driver for the missing dates.

I started with the lo-fi wireframes — a pen, a paper and a marker. I then jumped to my laptop’s screen and started designing the mid-fi wireframes. The next and last step were the high-fi wireframes.

You can take a look at some of the most important screens below: