Rate your Lyft — Rheaa Kamath

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 11.16.57.png — **Rate your Lyft**

**Duration**: 3 weeks
**Context**: UX Fundamentals Studio Project 2
**Skills**: Secondary Research, Interviews, Personas
Prototyping, Usability Testing, Documentation
**Team**: Kanika Rao, Eleanor Hamilton, Rheaa Kamath (me!)
**Platform**: Mobile

Overview

Lyft is one of the fastest growing companies in the ridesharing economy; however, there are many issues with having a five-star rating system in place due the extreme rating habits of users and its subjective nature. Lyft drivers are being rated unfairly as a result and so our solution aims to create a rating system that ensures drivers are rated fairly while driving passengers.

Understanding the problem space

We wanted to get a better sense of what Lyft’s current rating system was like and what its competitors are doing differently (competitive analysis)

We were able to find research studies that had already interviewed people in age groups we were not able to reach. In a study by Margo Dawes, submitted to the Massachusetts Institutes of Technology, in 2016, she surveyed people aged 18-55+. The survey focused on gaining insight on people’s opinions towards ride sharing services and their needs regarding them.

Key Takeaways:

The main three reasons people use ride-share services like Uber or Lyft is for: avoiding driving while intoxicated, social and leisure purposes, and getting to and from the airport.
Lyft has a strict policy on drivers, requiring them to have an average rating of 4.8 or higher to avoid consideration for deactivation.
Compared to similar ride-sharing services, like Uber, Lyft tries to provide a casual environment in which riders feel encouraged to sit in the front seat and strike up a conversation.
Pros: Drivers have good job flexibility, work/life balance, and get to meet new people.
Cons: Drivers have poor job security, they often face bad behavior from riders, and tend to get poor customer reviews for reasons out of their control.

Persona development

We created two personas based on the findings from our secondary and primary research that guided our ideation process

Interviews

When interviewing, we decided to focus our efforts on people aged from 18-21. We had considered reaching out to a middle-aged range of people, but found that it would be beneficial to have our user group be young adults; this user group is not only more accessible to us, but we are able to understand the demographic more.

We asked our interviewees questions about familiarity with the Lyft app, qualities they look for in a Lyft ride, and their ideal ride experience.

Key Takeaways:

Getting there safely and on time are top concerns.
Driver participation in a conversation can vary based on rider preference, but this can drastically affect ratings.
Mostly, if they are friendly, will give a good rating (but what is considered a “good rating” is subjective).
Most interviewees were unaware of how the current rating system affects drivers.
Interviewees prioritized demeanor of the driver.

Ideation

We wanted to create a method to allow users to rate their overall experience, provide feedback to drivers, and give additional comments to help drivers improve the experience for riders.

Below are the various different screens that we ideated upon:

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 14.59.29.png — Preferences

During the sign-up process in the Lyft app, users would be
greeted with this screen.The adjectives we provide to describe
rides were selected from the Lyft app, interviews, and secondary
research.
This screen shows what the user would see after selecting his/her
top five preferences.

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 14.59.48.png — Ratings

This is the first part of the rating screen a user will see after their
ride. We chose to offer only **two rating options** because of
insights we gained through our secondary research.
Let’s pretend the user selects the green smiley face. Then, the
happy face will remain green and the sad face will become grey.

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 15.00.35.png — Preferences + Rating

After completing the overall rating, the user has an opportunity
to rank his/her top three traits from the ride out of the five
preferences they selected during sign-up.
This is what the screen looks like after the top three traits have
been chosen. The user also has an opportunity to provide
additional comments to explain their rating and perspective.
(In Nico’s scenario, he would explain how he almost missed his
flight because of the traffic and the driver’s choice of route.)

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 15.00.46.png — Pop-up Notifications

We wanted to create an opportunity for users to go back
and **finish incomplete ratings**, **up to a week after their ride**. We
hoped to create a unique lock screen notification to remind users
to finish an incomplete rating, and came up with two different
options.
We created two versions of this screen to identify through testing
which ones people would more likely choose.
Allowing users to go back and finish incomplete ratings helps
out users like **Nico**, who are **in too much of a rush** at the end of
their ride to take the time to rate then and there.

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 15.01.11.png — Default Screen

In the existing app, the Ride History tab exists. **We added a Ride**
**Ratings tab** to see how users would prefer reaching their
incomplete ratings during usability testing. We intended to keep
only one of the two tabs in our final iteration. The one we kept
was determined based on usability test results.

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 15.01.19.png — Ride History Screen

After clicking on the Ratings tab, the user would come to a
screen where they could see all previous ratings, **both**
**completed and incomplete**. On this screen, the user could
choose to complete an incomplete rating by clicking on the tab
of the corresponding incomplete rating. Once chosen, the user
would be brought to their incomplete rating (the smileys page
with rankings and additional comments).

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 15.25.13.png — Ride Ratings Screen

This is the screen a user would see if they clicked on the **Ride**
**Ratings** tab rather than **Ride History**. Similarly to the Ratings tab
within the Ride History tab, a user would simply click the
corresponding ride to go back to the rating.

Usability testing

We conducted two rounds of usability testing, giving our participants tasks and scenarios to help them embody the experience.

We gave simple tasks such as “Set up an account” at first, so the user could gain familiarity with the interface. After that, we gave the user scenarios to see how they would react when rating the drivers. The scenarios we gave them were the same scenarios of our personas. Next, we asked the user their preference between “Ride Ratings” and “Ride History” and the two notifications we had come up with.

Key Takeaways:

The Ride History tab was preferred over Ride Ratings
The more personal notification was preferred
When brought to the incomplete/completed ratings page, users tended to want to click on the completed ratings, even though there was nothing left to complete under that tab

Final Iteration

With all of the information found through our two rounds of testing, we began improving our solution and created our final iteration.

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 15.33.53.png — Default Screen

Our results of usability testing showed that the **Ride History** tab
was **preferred** over the Ride Ratings tab, so we kept it for our
final iteration.

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 15.34.04.png — Ride History Screen

After clicking on the **Ride History** tab, users will be brought to
this screen. We removed the previously added **Ratings tab** to
the navigation bar, and simplified the interface. Now, users
are **immediately** able to see their incomplete and completed
ratings.

We also changed the “ > “ under Completed Ratings to check
marks to **clearly signify** that they were completed.

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 15.34.10.png — Pop-up Notification

From our usability testing, we gained insight that the notification
with **more personal wording** would be most likely to be clicked
on, so we went with it.

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 15.34.16.png — Incomplete Rating Notification

We gained the insight that showing a notification in the Ride
History tab could:
1. Make it easier to find the tab easier
2. Draw attention to the incomplete rating(s)
To represent a notification, we added **a red dot** next to the Ride
History tab. Users will see this dot and know that there are
actions to complete within it.

Index cover photo courtesy : https://www.pymnts.com/news/security-and-risk/2019/lyft-driver-background-checks-ridesharing/