Lyft Student Project
Product design
Overview
As a UX student I explored potential opportunities for Lyft to facilitate more social interaction within it’s rides specifically between riders and drivers. I wanted to validated this hypothesis and to do this I interviewed people to understand different points of view on interactions between riders and drivers.
Research
I created created a screener survey to help find participants for interviews. This consisted of Lyft users of ages (between 21-45) and people who had recently used Lyft.
I interviewed 11 participants in the end and here’s what I found:
1. Overall participants do not see Lyft as a social environment to connect with others or with drivers.
2. Participants mainly see Lyft as a transaction and nothing more.
3. Participants prefer to not talk to or connect with drivers or other riders.
Ideation
The results seemed to have complicate things bit as I now had to think of a way to create social interaction when my research told me that it’s not something that user’s wanted. So I thought of more transactional interactions rather than social.
Design
In terms of “transactional” interactions I found from interviews was the that participants had stated they would sometimes interact with their drivers regarding the local area if they were visiting or on vacation. They would ask for directions or places to eat among other local recommendations. So from this sprouted the idea of a new ride offering which would essentially allow drivers and riders to opt for the exchange of local information. I called it Lyft Guide.
