T3 - Designed for Safe Ride
Build up safety in car-sharing services
Overview
T3 Mobile Travel Platform offers car-sharing services in China and has become a notable competitor in the mobile transportation market. Aiming at offering safe trip, T3 framed its need in how SAFETY is highlighted in their car-hailing service. According to the client’s need and user research, our design solutions are helping users track safety and learn safety precautions to make the travel experience safe and happy.
MY ROLE
UX/UI design, User research
Worked with the designers, researchers and PM to design the “Safety features” for T3 1.0.10 version. Led the visual design.
DURATION
Dec 2019 - Feb 2020
IMPACT
"Your project shows a deep consideration on safety issue."
Able to benefit more than 3.2 million users.
Highlighted T3's innovative safety system and improved user experience.
ABOUT T3
T3 is a powerful competitor in car-hailing industry with total investment of 1.45 billion dollars.
3.2 million registered users
Operated with 12,000 vehicles with more than 200,000 daily orders.
Background
Safety has risen as a public priority in the China car-hailing industry.
Passed tragedies in 2018 became top news in the China mobile transportation market and became a public issue. The question about how to protect passengers not only brought a fraught time for all the ride-sharing companies but also challenged the public attitude to car-pooling services and their safety awareness.
Car-hailing company T3 invented its unique V.D.R Safety System to protect safety
T3 was launched in 2019 as a new force in car-hailing market. Having seen the safety issues in the industry, T3 places safety as its top principle. It leverages the innovative Vehicle. Driver. Road System (V.D.R system) to protect users' safety.
T3 V.D.R. System
Client Need
Highlight T3's safety system and make safety advantage as its competitive edge.
I am asked to optimize T3's safety experience. The goals were to effectively protect users' safety by highlighting T3's safety features, and attract more users to choose T3's services with its brand image.
Conducted Research
I conducted research with the research team and built up empathy from Desktop Research, Product Manager, Competitors and Users.
Desktop Research - to learn the status quo and social context of car-hailing industry in China
- Fierce competition calls for uniqueness
"In order to have more market share, ride-hailing brands had to build unique product and services in recent years.There are reasons to believe they may fight even harder for market share in the future."
China's Ride-hailing Market Dynamics, 2020- Gender discrepancy: female tend to choose B2C car-hailing products
According to the statistic data, we noticed that female users are tend to choose B2C platforms instead of C2C, which may related to safety concern.
China's Ride-hailing Market Dynamics, 2020- Passenger safety has become a public issue
The question about how to protect passengers not only brought a fraught time for all the ride-sharing companies but also challenged the public attitude to car-pooling services and their safety awareness.
Check with PM - to better understand the V.D.R System and T3's product landscape qualitatively and quantitatively
- Vehicle.Driver.Road system (V.D.R system)： connect vehicle, driver and road to build a safety network
Road, vehicle, and driver are the three most important factors in safety-related issues. T3 connected those three factors in an integrated network to better monitor trips. T3 is using innovative equipments on users' side, such as in-car alarm buttons and more equipments running backend to track and protect safety.
- 67% of users know T3's safety strength by the alarm button in the car
Alarm button is the most visible feature within the V.D.R system and it proves that T3 is able to differentiate itself by its innovative safety precautions. It is an opportunity for T3 to improve the discoverability of other safety features.
- T3 is using price strategy for new users
Competitive Analysis - to dive into the market to understand current safety solutions and underlying concerns
- Safety features are heavily rely on apps
- Highly homogeneity
Most China's car-hailing platforms have similar safety features.
- Lack guidance
There is no necessary information to guide users to use the safety features and take action.
Interview
Understanding how users react to safety issue in real car-hailing situations.
User Interview - to understand how users feel about safety and uncover underserved needs
We interviewed 15 users that includes both T3 users and general car-hailing services users. The interviewee covered both gender, from 21 to 49 years old. The goals were to know how people feel about the present T3 safety solutions, and what means safety to general passengers?
Findings
Synthesized the takeaways from the conducted research
Finding 1: Unfamiliarity of safety features and price sensitivity
1. Value safe service with reliable drivers but unfamiliar with T3 safety features
Safe services are needed and driver is an important factor of safety for most passengers. However, most users are not familiar with T3's VDR system, alarm system, and other innovative safety equipments.
2. Some users would consider price over safety
Although safety is important, many users would still prefer cheaper service. Only selling safety strengths has limited effect on increasing user base.
Finding 2: Value simpleness and efficiency
1. Grey area: "Am I safe? Am I not?" - Cognitive Load
Users value efficiency during car-hailing. However, most of the safety features used at present need pay attention and make decision.
2. Efficiency is the NO.1 tag for the car-hailing service
Users value efficiency during car-hailing. However, most of the safety features used now need users to pay attention.
User Journey
The flow visualizes needs and safety concerns during car-hailings. It shows the opportunities during the process to improve safety and user experience.
There are three main pain points during the car-hailing process.
1. being familiar with the driver, who is an important indicator of safety.
2. enabling users to maintain safety with the minimum cognitive load during the trip.
3. hoping to pay less.
Problem 1
How might we make passengers feel safe with minimum efforts?
We want to make full use of the T3 safety features and make it actionable in order to keep safety with lowest efforts for users to protect safety.
Design strategies and requirements
Make better use of V.D.R system and vehicle network to protect safety and minimize user cognition load for a user-friendly experience.
Consistency
Efficiency
Keep the experience consistent. Follow the existing visual effect.
Design the actionable, reliable and effective safety solutions.
Simple
On-time
Require no extra efforts and protect safety with minimum cognitive load.
Provide on time and actionable reaction when facing danger.
Current issues
How does current product fail to touch the pain points?
Ideation
Make better use of the V.D.R system and change the implicit information to explicit
1. Redesign Driver's Profile
Give clear and straight forward information that users want.
2. Automatically Safety Detection using V.D.R. system
Guide users to take effective action just when it needs.
Design:
Driver profile
Add professional badges on the driver's profile
Change the implicit driver information to explicit.
UI Exploration
We explored the user interface with several versions and finally decided on the left one because there is too much information for users to process. In the final version, we grouped the information in different sections to decease cognitive load.
Design:
Auto-detection
Auto detection leveraging VDR technology - Save human cognition load
Guide users to take effective action just when it needs.
VDR system can auto-detect the driver and car on the backend.
Colors indicate different status - safe, moderate, action needed.
Text label describes the situation.
Buttons guide users to take action.
Problem 2
How might we attract new users with unique safety services?
How to combine safety uniqueness and other effective business strategies to increase user base?
Current issues
The current product fails to touch the pain points.
T3 fails to sell its unique safety features
According to the user research, most users are not familiar with T3's safety features.
T3 is selling its safety technologies by a popup window when user open the app. However, T3 chose a wrong touchpoint and users have less interest on dry texts and advertisement.
A more efficient way to attract users should:
- be prominent
- get to users at a proper touchpoint
- be time-saving
- be fully controllable by users
- be engaging and interesting
- be rewarding
Opportunity and strategy
Although T3 is giving promotions to new users, they didn't take this opportunity to educate user with their unique safety features, which can make them stand out.
Why not to combine safety strength with commercial strategies, to make the trip safe and economical.
Design Solution
Safety tutorial for coupon
Make the trip safe and economical.
Rationale
Use a popup modal to replace the original one. The touchpoint is chosen at the moment when users have got on the vehicle (got job done). Use illustrations and involve gamification principle to make the tutorial engaging and caring. Keep it short and right to the point.
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Design Walkthrough
Build up safety with the balance of the client need and user concerns.
Driver profile
redesign
Add professional badge on the driver profile
Problem Solved
1. Users want to know more driver’s information when they need it.
2. Client wants to highlight their safety technology
Auto-detection
Using technology embedded to auto detect safety level.
Problem solved
1. Users want to pay the minmum efforts on safety detection.
2. Make better use of the T3’s technology
Safety tutorial for coupon
Teach and encourage users to learn T3’s safety solution and attract more users.
Problem Solved
1. Users prefer both safe service and cheap service.
2. Increase users’ familiarity with T3’s innovative safety features
Feedback
Feedback from the client
"Your group shows the most profound thought in understanding the safety issue among all the groups and you have given several exciting solutions.
People treat safety in carsharing quite passively. They start to think of safety when they are really threatened by danger. I appreciate your design that innovatively highlights T3’s safety advantages."
Feedback from the user
We did the first round of user test with 12 users to evaluate the Driver Profile feature.
1. Most of the users said it could increase their confidence of taking rides.
2. 10 out of 12 users said they leaned about T3's safety advantage via this new feature.
3. 12 users generated an average score of 8 (out of 10) in question "How likely are you willing to recommend T3 to others because of the safety advantage?"
Impact and Next Step
Impact
The solutions can benefits 3.2 + MILLION users.
We got positive feedback from the user testing of DRIVER PROFILE. Users think that it is very useful and can improve their confidence in taking T3's ride.
Many users are willing to recommend T3 to others because of the safety advantage. It would benefit company's long-term goal on expanding market.
Next Step: In-depth usability test with the new features
Possible quantitative metrics that can be used to evaluate success:
Click-through rate of the quiz
Completion rate of the quiz
Increase of order completion rate in night