Lyfted Case Study
Over the last 10 weeks, as a team, we focused on enhancing the mobile user experience of the Lyft application using fundamental principles of human-centered design. We focused on pinpointing common inherent issues, while also trying to expand on new helpful features, with improving customer support and introducing information management. This prompted us to create the new features of Live Help, Ride Data, and in-app Frequently Asked Questions. With these features, we believe Lyft’s user retention statistics will improve greatly and the company will foster better brand loyalty.
We were presented with the task of improving the user experience of the Lyft rideshare application to better retain users over its rideshare competitors. The project was given ten weeks to be completed and we began coordinating to meet this deadline.
The rideshare market is competitive and many users do not stick to any one rideshare application. This project exists to keep users using the Lyft application over its competitors. We plan on doing this by focusing on the Lyft customer support features and creating avenues for users to obtain useful ride data information to help budgeting and monetary tracking.
Our goal is to implement several features and reorganize data presentation.
We decided to spread the work needed to complete the project amongst the team. This decision stemmed from our previous experiences of working in teams. We believed that delegating our work would allow for a better overall workflow that allows the members of the team to focus on their assignment and output higher quality work.
Matt, Ransky, and Reid were in charge of putting together a survey for current users of Lyft. The purpose of the survey was to identify problems users faced in the app and also see what users enjoyed about the app. We’ve depicted some key information gathered from the survey below.
The survey was held via Google Forms and was spread through different means of social media (Ex. Reddit, Twitter, Discord). A link to the survey is located here [https://bit.ly/2UnK4e0]
All team members were tasked with the creation of a user persona to give a face to common users types of the Lyft app. These were created based on the previous user research of the needs, pains, and goals of our audience.
The user journey is the expected experience a user would go through when using our app. It maps out the thinking process and general emotional states of the user while they go through various touchpoints. The journey map was completed through the collaboration of Britney and Ransky.
We focused on creating a seamless cohesive experience for our users. Here are our two task flows: one for Ride Data, and for Live Help.
These are the preliminary sketches for the overall layout and feel of the lyfted app. Every member of the team created their own rendition of what they felt that it should look like. These were then later used as a base in creating our prototype wireframes.
The wireframes focused on building out a basic help page along with a pop-up message to contact a driver. The help page included FAQ, topic categories, and a link to a live help page. As for the contact driver feature, its purpose is to allow riders to be able to contact drivers for any lost items.
Everyone on the team individually created their own mood board, Matt then compiled our mood boards, taking the best from each, to create a team mood board. It represents the overall feel we are aiming for in terms of our brand image.
An extension of the current Lyft system, we decided to incorporate some more colors from Lyft’s secondary color palette. Keeping with the idea of sleek, minimal, and clean, we used more washed out colors to retain that style. The typeface chosen is Cabin, which is meant to look very similar to the current font, but a bit more modern. Lastly, the illustrations have stayed mostly the same but were modified to better match the system we’ve created, and we added a new icon library.
At this point in the process, we decided it was best to have a design team focus on the prototypes to keep a consistent and efficient workflow moving forward. The content management team would analyze and present feedback on the design. The prototypes were further iterated upon at each stage with the feedback received from conducting usability tests on the prototype’s current version.
Our thought process while creating our new design was to focus on prioritizing information architecture and hierarchy, navigation, and usability, while improving on brand personality. We wanted to solidify our process flows to be easily recognizable. We showcased this in our Live Help feature, where riders would need to state their problem initially, resulting in being in contact with a Lyft support agent. In our Ride Data feature, we kept the flow as it is on the Lyft app. However, we introduced another dimension within the preexisting Ride History by simply adding a button indicating the ability to view ride data. Overall we always focused on usability: how can we make these features easily accessible? We added a button on both the homepage for Live Help, and the Ride History page. These quick and easily accessible buttons introduced another seamless experience.
For brand personality, we took this up a notch. Lyft’s pre existing brand is lively with its strong pink color and pleasant icons. Keeping this in mind, we decided to retain the brand personality but introduce more cheerful colors, adding to its lively environment. We remembered to focus on color significance and ensured these new additions weren’t a surprise from our usability test sessions.
We firmly believe that this project was a success. We set out to expand on the existing features of the app. Live help allows users to seamlessly interact with a Lyft support agent to quickly solve an issue at hand, rather than navigating through the app to try to find solutions. With our new ride data page, many users expressed joy when encountering it. They vocalized how it was a nice way to collectively showcase the amount they spent per month or year without needing to calculate the information themselves.
We learned about the iterative process of UX testing and designing and how there will always be room for improvement. One hindrance to our results was that some of the users had been interviewed twice with different iterations of our prototypes. This could lead to bias in how they perceived the app and navigated it. Overall, this project was a great learning experience in the research and development part of user experience design.
