Given the fact that people used multiple means of transport, from cars, bikes, public transport to shared e-scooters, mobility is changing and people have diverse needs in how they travel and spend their finances in this area of their life. As a mobility provider, the client wanted to investigate how people move around the city and how they spend their money on mobility.
In order to investigate the mobility challenge, the team had to understand the behaviors, needs and motivations of local mobility users. After an initial research phase, the team focused on the behavior of sharing a ride and splitting the bill after. As sharing a ride was not common in Catalonia - a region in Spain- due to cultural factors, company's policies and the market's unreadiness, the team wanted to know if ride sharing would be an interest for people and if so, how to design an experience to suit their mobility and financial needs.
RESEARCH GOAL
Creating s research goal is the first step in focusing and starting the project. Our goal was: Design a process to help all mobility users to track, simplify and design their monthly transportation finances in order for them to make better decisions according to different priorities and needs.
16 in-depth interviews; 18 guerrila interviews in metros/ coworking spaces
The team achieved to interview diverse people with ages between 25 and 35, about their travel and financial mobility preferrences. The in-depth interviews were done face to face with people living in the city, while data was also gathered from spaces where people travel - like the metro - or working spaces, where the team ingeniously installed a "guerrila questioning" kiosk, with mobility artifacts, where they asked 10 minutes questions to coworkers.
SYNTHESIS and INSIGHTS
1. For many people, budgeting is related to care and responsibilities for others, prioritizing personal or family needs.
2. Some people make decisions for how to travel based on pre-constructed mental budget limits (eg "I know how much money I can spend for transport").
3. There is a perception that sharing a car ride can help the passengers save money, build trust and feel more safe. (eg " I would share a car if it can help me save money")
Some of the ways in which the data was visualized was through a user journey and personas. When presented to the client, these tools supported the understanding of the potential journey steps and the target audience of this service. In this stage of the project, the team had to pivot their idea, as insufficient data was collected and the initial purpose of the project was misunderstood by the team.
After several meetings with the client, the final agreed goal of the project was to design a way to help all mobility users easily share a ride with strangers in order for them to feel more secure, at easy and save money. The team focused on testing various hypothesis related to the topic. In order to test the experience, the team used diffrent types of prototypes:
The team wanted to test how people behave in a shared ride, with people who did not know each other. The experience prototype gave the team many insights on people's behavior, body language and concerns that might arise during a ride sharing trip.
For the design of the prototype, Figma was used to design the app. After testing an initial digital prototype in a shared car setting, the team observed that people feel uncomfortable during the ride with strangers. Based on these observations, some social activities during the ride were introduced. They were based on different times of day.
SAMPLE MOBILE APP PROTOTYPE: See how it works in Figma
In the beginning of the ride it was weird, but when the question game started my phone, I felt more relaxed and I actually had fun.
M
ost of the passengers enjoyed the games in the car, and reported feeling more comfortable. The team created a number of activities based on times of day as people might have different emotional states and needs during a day. Although not all activities were tested, the concept received good feedback from the client. Further directions are explored below.
The final prototype included a video prototype meant to explain in a visual way the concept of ShareCare. The concept could bring additional value to the business, by offering a competitive advantage, improve matching of passengers in a ride sharing scenario, while the activities can help the driver and the passenger in feeling more comfortable, calm and relaxed.
The ShareCare project proved to be difficult because the team misaligned with the client in the early stages regarding the purpose (more focus had to be given to the spending on transport, that the experience per se). The team, in agreement with the client, eventually changed the goal of the project.
After some aditional literature research, the team understood that, as the some authors demonstrated, that one of biggest factor for changing behavior to ridesharing seems to be the availability of matches (Nielsen R,J., Hovmøller H., Blyth P-L.,Sovacool B.J (2015).
Thus, given this information, through this project the team investigated how to open the market for ridesharing in Spain. The concept in this project investigated a scenario in which ridesharing is working, adding improvements -social games- which hopefully can accelerate the adoption of ride sharing on this market, provide competitive advantage and increased customer satisfaction. With further research, the value delivered could be three-fold:
The transformation that this project brought was from a previous state of unreadiness of market to embrace ridesharing to a current state of exploration where games in the car can improve experiences and to future directions of where the mobility provider can further develop. Some interesting provocations that the team launched were, for example, how might we create positive expectations about ride sharing? More research is needed to investigate these potential future directions and concepts.