sO
Vehicle Rental app
Car rental app researched and developed while studying for Professional Diploma in UX Design.
(UXDI, Dublin)
ROLE
Researcher
UX Design
UI Design
TOOLS
Keynote
Miro
Figma
sO Vehicle App
The Approach
-
User Interviews
-
Usability Testing
|| The Story ||
While studying for my Professional Diploma in UX Design, I had to research and develop a new car rental app.
The process involved -
Research
Competitive Benchmarking
Note Taking
User Interviews
Usability Testing
Analysis
Affinity Mapping
CJM
Flow Diagrams
Design
Sketches
Wire-framing
Protoyping
|| The Challenge ||
There are many car rental apps in the marketplace - from rental companies and aggregators.
This is both positive and negative when designing a new app -
-
With so many apps it's harder to stand out from the crowd
-
However, there are many more examples of things the existing apps are failing with, and its easier to identify areas for improvement
|| The Approach ||
Our approach began with the following research -
-
Competitive Benchmarking
-
User Interviews
-
Usability Testing
-
Note Taking
Competitive Benchmarking
I compared 4 existing car rental apps and researched the following -
-
What are the companies doing well that can be emulated?
-
What areas can be improved?
-
What 'pain points' might users encounter?
-
How was the overall user experience?
Hertz
Sixt
Turo
You can read the full Benchmarking document
Avis
Findings
- Apps with cluttered interfaces are harder to navigate through.
- Only include features relevant to that screen.
- The clearer the process, the easier it is for the user to progress through.
- The biggest 'pain point' was hidden costs and the lack of clarity on what was being paid for and what was included in the booking.
Note Taking
(from User Interviews)
I conducted user interviews both in-person and online. The results were invaluable in understanding user behaviour when engaging with car rental apps.
You can read the notes of the interviews
Findings
- Users want to feel in charge of the process of booking, and to not be prevented in moving the journey process forward.
- Don't assume the user understands all the terms that the rental company does
- Make things clear.
- Ensure the process moves forward in a positive way to encourage user booking.
User Flow
first sketch of Flow
This flow really helped inform the next stage - Sketches.
The stages of the flow were designed to be clear, positive and give the user a momentum to complete the booking process.
Sketches
These first rough sketches formed the backbone of the app wireframes, and gave me a chance to visualise how each page could look.
|| The Conclusion ||
Researching and designing this app has been a brilliant experience. I hope I've managed to identify some gaps in the user flow within car rental booking.
Turning those gaps into a more positive and enjoyable process has been my guiding principle in this case study
For me - booking a car might be the last step in the exciting process of holiday planning, and for it be let down by negative and redundant parts is frustrating and totally unnecessary.
For next time.....
-
get a larger sample size for the user interviews
-
produce high-fidelity wireframes
-
have more time to do a deeper dive into researching the user and develop useful use profiles