CollabCar
Year
Role
Subject
Tools
2018
UX research / UI designer
Carsharing
Sketch
CollabCar is a car-sharing company that operates in the Netherlands and offers services to customers. The company aims to enhance its services for businesspeople who arrive at the airport. They want to position themselves as a more flexible car rental option compared to traditional airport car rental services that lack flexibility.
CollabCar believes that traditional car rental services do not meet the current needs of businesspeople, as they have to pay for the entire day even if they only need the car for a few hours. With car-sharing services, businesspeople can use the car when they need it and only pay for the time they use. The CollabCar app allows users to locate a car nearby, unlock it, and use it. Once the trip is over, users can drop off the car at any designated area in the city, and other users can pick it up from there.
However, CollabCar is unsure how businesspeople will use their service and whether improvements are needed to better meet their needs.
Logo
This is the final logo for CollabCar after several iterations. It was crucial for the logo to represent the company's core business, which is car-sharing. The name "CollabCar" comes from the combination of "Collaboration" and "Car," referring to the collective ownership of multiple cars, which is what car-sharing is all about. For the logo, I chose the Futura font for its legibility from a distance and modern look. The font is italicized for a dynamic feel, and the capital C's are positioned lower than the baseline to resemble wheels of a car. These design elements give the logo a unique and distinctive appearance. To complete the logo, I added road stripes beneath the letters A and B, referencing the popular phrase "going from A to B." Overall, the logo effectively represents CollabCar's car-sharing services in a clear and memorable way.
Defining the problem
To identify the real problem, I spoke with actual Business to Customer car-sharing users who frequently use Car2go, one of the leading one-way trip car-sharing companies in the Netherlands. I also consulted with a car-sharing expert, Jeffrey Matthijs from Autodelen.net, to gain more knowledge on the subject. While this led to several insightful findings, I had to narrow down the collected insights to fit within CollabCar's briefing. To do this, I used the Divergence and Convergence Cycles technique, which helped me as a designer to make informed decisions in the process. For more techniques on this subject, I recommend reading the Design Thinking Methodology Book [2016] by Emrah Yayici.
After narrowing down the insights, I discovered that some users faced difficulties during the booking phase of the process. When they arrive at the airport, people usually have their trip, transportation, hotel, and city plans already arranged. Interviewees indicated that they wanted to be certain they could use the car-sharing service upon arrival. However, the current system does not allow users to reserve or book a car more than 20 minutes in advance. Extending the reservation period of the car would decrease the car's usage time, which is not ideal for a car-sharing concept. Therefore, the main problem is: how can we provide users with the certainty of a car when they arrive at the airport without decreasing the car's usage time?
Visualize the problem
The problem Carsharing has to solve is the availability of the service. Customers need the certainty to have a car when they arrive therefore it would be a great addition to be able to book it a couple days beforehand.
Creating a Persona
In this stage it's important to understand the behaviors and goals of the target group that will use this platform. Using a Persona to resemblance the behaviors and goals will help to stay focused on the platform’s goal. This persona is created by doing interviews and an observation research.
Pencil on paper
After creating a Persona things were getting clearer how the platform should look like. Sometimes the best way is to start making rough wireframes sketches. The sketches are a result of the insights of the persona. Because the prefered way of booking is through a desktop website, I’ve decided to make this as my main design challenge.
Design with the user's goal in mind
User Flows are useful when you quickly need a clear way to see the structure of the user's process through your design pages. In my case I’ve tried to figure out the most logical booking process for the user.
Find resources that backs up your design goal
Designing a booking site requires information that the user needs to fill in. Basically the user needs to fill in a webform to be able to book a car. There are many resources on the internet that explain how to enhance the experience of webforms. I’ve found Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski [2008] very useful, it covers the most important information to improve webforms.
Stylescape
Using stylescapes makes it easier to communicate your design with clients and users. It’s something I always use as a designer, because using a stylescape as design reference your designs will be more cohesive.
Refine your design by prototype testing
These prototypes are made visually coherent with the stylescapes I’ve made earlier. Now it’s more clear how the site will look like while adjustments can still easily be done. The goal of these prototypes are finding flaws in the designs I’ve made, to do so I’ve set up a usability test plan so it’s clear what to test. I wanted to know if my prototype was logical and intuitive, after testing several times with the target group I’ve also tried to engage them to have a conversation about improvements. This has led to some small detailed changes, like a calculator to calculate their total cost and a visual cue at the pricing. These changes are only made possible by prototype testing, and that's why it’s so important as a UX designer to prototyping.
End result
Play the video
Useful resources
These are the books I've used for this project and I can highly recommend them!
Web form design
Filling in the blanks by Luke Wroblewski.
Design Thinking
Methodology book by Emrah Yayici.
