PULL UP
Product Design
Interaction Design
Service Design
SaaS
Providing car lending opportunities to everyday people in need of
transportation.
Pull Up is a peer to peer car sharing network that allows vehicle owners generate income from their vehicle by leasing it out to other people when not in use. On one hand a vehicle owner leases their vehicle and makes money from it, while on the other, anyone with a certified drivers’ license can easily rent a vehicle on Pull Up.
My goal was to work with the team to create a web and mobile product for users.
Introducing Pull Up
Rent cars around you in three easy steps
Product Overview
Pullup is a carsharing marketplace that provides car lending opportunities to everyday people in need of transportation. The company allows private car owners in Africa to rent out their vehicles via a web and mobile interface. The mobile product is the core application used by the owners and renters, while the business uses the web product to monitor requests and optimize performance.
“Think AirbnB or Vrbo, but for vehicles.”
I led the design for the product and was tasked with setting product and service experience while managing two other designers.
We streamlined the onboarding process and built features across it’s mobile and web products, while directing user research efforts to drive demand and new customer acquisition. The following year (2021), the business reported a 41% increase in the company’s direct revenue since the launch of both platforms.
The challenge with regards to car sharing
Transportation is a vital part of our everyday lives. We almost don’t even have to think about it. Now, with the internet and our devices as prime tools, we’re constantly finding easier ways to move between locations.
Ride hailing— a prime example. If you've tried to get around in recent times, and you don't own a car, you've likely experienced some discomfort. The hassle of calling and waiting for an Uber or taxi every time you need to go anywhere and worse, the outrageous total cost when you have multiple places to visit in one day.
Pull Up was created to provide a cost effective way to get around by putting people's existing cars to better use. But as with any new service for the first time, people had tons of reservations ilike security and general concerns, as it is a new business model that aimed to influence user behaviours. As such, users were finding it difficult to get onboard and customer adoption was low on the platform.
To solve these challenges, my goals were to give the business the ability to:
- Digitise the car renting process and reduce the need for walk-in applications while improving the security and the level of trust the public has in the business.
- Increase new customer acquisition by improving the understanding of the services being offered on its platform, and allowing users to easily get onboard in time to experience their aha moments.
“So, what’s the ideal way to solve everyone's transportation needs?”
Starting with the Basics
Understanding how car sharing works
To improve Pull up's existing customer onboarding process, we needed to understand how it worked to avoid reinventing the wheel. I worked closely with the Product Manager to achieve this by organising customer journey workshops and holding both in-person and online user testing sessions with existing customers.
We were able to map out the current service design flows and draft improvements based on our findings. These workshops were also a great way to network with renters and owners to build relationships that facilitated the project.
Our findings provided some insights that would answer these questions:
- What cognitive biases and mental models do we need to take into consideration in the design?
- What affects how car renters and owners use the product?
- What business constraints and metrics do we need to design for?
- How do people interact with existing solutions in the market?
Identified User Needs
FINDING NEW PATTERNS
Synthesizing the data from the workshops enabled us to identify the following user behaviour patterns:
Car renters and owners:
- Have several reservations, as with using any new service for the first time,
- Need an efficient way to match renters and owners based on location
- Like to have the option of pickups, or having the vehicle brought right to their location
- Need a way to easily communicate with each other through the app.
- And many others…
Because this was a long-term project alongside daily updates and new features, we arranged them with the aid of a prioritization matrix and set out to solve each of the highlighted problems.
Comparing Existing Solutions
EXploring alternatives
Subsequently, we carried out a competitive analysis of other existing ride hailing solutions to see how these businesses had been able to approach the same problems and execute similar ideas.
Trying out firsthand experiences with some of these applications enabled the team to note down the things they had done right and connected with our current understanding of why they had done it, or how they had gone about it.
iteration process
Our team worked with the agile methodology, so we incrementally built MVPs, the next more polished than the last. This allowed us to move fast and test clickable prototypes with customers that volunteered to help. Working this way also helped us validate assumptions we made while drafting the proposed service design, and we modified the UI and experience based on customer feedback from user testing sessions.
Re-introducing Pull Up
Whether you're heading out to the beach, up into the mountains, straight to a hotel room, or just looking for something a little spiffier or more functional than a Chevy Malibu, it's plainly and simply the easiest way to rent a car.
Key Decisions Made
From tedious to instant — A Search Away
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To achieve a robust and scalable car rental reservation process, we considered what kind of information renters need to know about the vehicles. The goal was to create a pleasant booking experience for them within the consideration phase of the sales funnel. We factored this into the search design to answer the questions that they might have in their booking moments.
Examples of such questions include:
- Model and description of the vehicle
- Average cost of the renting period
- Minimal number of seats
- Fuel type
- Year and Mileage
- Rating and reviews from previous renters
- Location and mode of delivery
- Gearbox (Automatic, Manual) etc.
We revamped the overview page to tell a better story of the car and keep the renters engaged with just the right amount of information they need to make their decision.
From Inefficient to Optimized — filtered lists
- On this bit, we leaned into the special features that make a car unique, like a sunroof or all-wheel drive. Car owners are advised to include all the features that will help beef up their listings and improve its discoverability, since renters can filter by feature.
From Constrained to Considerate – NEw onboarding process
- A key insight discovered during research was that the onboarding process was tedious and required a lot of information. This meant that people often dropped off as soon as they tried to sign up on the platform.
We managed this through the use of progressive onboarding patterns to enable users experience and discover the value of the product before fully committing to providing all the necessary details. Most of the users found this and the ability to save onboarding progress to be a major improvement to the product's experience.
Establishing trust and accountability
KYC - DOcument upload
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The new onboarding process communicated the need for identification documents and kept the users adequately informed on the next steps.
INcident reports
- Incident reports were born out of the need to manage security concerns and incidents of damage during a trip. Each car comes standard with insurance coverage, and is fitted with car tracking technology and a standby retrieval procedure.
All of which is communicated to the owners to establish trust in the renting process.
Marketing Efforts
We also ran multiple social media campaigns to educate the public on the value of the services being offered by Pull Up. This comprised of weekly email promotions sent to over 450,000 users and ads for various platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Learnings and Key Takeaways
Looking back, this was my first attempt at designing for the transportation industry, and I learnt a ton of new things while working with Pull Up; both from my teammates and the product itself.
I’m quite proud of the work we did, it’s impact on the business, and the fact that we made it a bit easier for people to get places.
