The In-car SOS System

The mobile app that completes the integration of the in-car SOS system, enables user to learn and understand the system, and helps T3Go to earn users and their trust.

Contributions

Competitive Analysis
Interview
Wireframes
Usability Testing

Tools

Sketch
InVision
Principle

Duration

4 Weeks
Jul 19 - Aug 19

Team

Amber
Jingru
Wenjie
Xiaoyuan
Zoe

SUMMARY

This is a consulting project for T3Go mobile app. T3Go planned to launch their first version of mobile app soon after this project. Our team was expected to provide the design that can help T3Go to build up the brand as reliability, trusty and vivacity to gain users. T3Go currently has 10 million users and over 600,000 orders per day.

SCENARIO

Commute alone at Late Evening

Margie does not own a car and there is no direct public transportation from her company to home. She works overtime tonight and needs to go back home alone at 11pm as soon as possible. Thus, safety is her primary need. She knows that T3Go provides an in-car SOS system and decides to try T3Go.

RESEARCH

DESKTOP STUDY

Through reading news, annual reports and reviews of competitors, we found that the major concerns and complains of ride-sharing is personal safety.

1. Between 2014-2018, there were more than 50 cases that female passengers were sexually assaulted/raped by their ride-sharing drivers, but none of them got attention.
2. In May and August 2018, two ride-sharing drivers rape and murder female passengers cases shocked people.

BACKGROUND

T3Go is the first ride-sharing platform that provides in-car SOS buttons. The following graph shows how the in-car SOS system works.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

To understand the standards of safety at ride-sharing service and help T3Go to find out its strengths😁 and potential opportunities🤔 , we conducted the competitive analysis.
T3Go’s Strengths:

(1). Platform-owned Cars
(2). 24h Control center
(3). In-car SOS Button

T3Go’s Potential Opportunities - A mobile app that contains:

(1). In-app SOS button
(2). Emergency Notifications
(3). Feedback on Emergency

With the mobile app, each component of the in-car SOS system can communicate with other parts effectively.

INTERVIEW

In order to understand the frustrations and concerns of safety in ride-sharing experience, as well as expectations with the in-car SOS system, we conducted interviews with 13 passengers and 1 driver. The focuses of the interview are to learn how to help passengers to have safe trips and T3Go to provide effective interactions between the in-car SOS system and its mobile app.

FINDINGS

From interviews, we learned that users expect to learn the following information:
1. Where are in-car SOS buttons?
2. How do I know whether in-car buttons work or not?
3. What will happen after I reporting emergency?

JOURNEY MAP

Based on the results, we created a journey map for Margie to further emphasize users’ needs and highlighted potential design opportunities that are related to the in-car SOS system on the mobile app. Here is a part of the journey map that relates to the in-car SOS system.

DESIGN GOALS

To help users to use the in-car SOS system properly, we set the following design goals:
1. The learnability of the in-car SOS system
2. The findability of the information about the SOS system
3. Reduce false alarms caused by pushing the SOS button mistakenly

SOLUTION DECISIONS

We decided to focus on design opportunities that align with the design goals:
Feature 1: The in-car SOS system intro - G1
Feature 2: The in-car SOS buttons status update - G2
Feature 3: The in-car SOS system alerts and feedbacks- G3

DESIGN

DESIGN OVERVIEW

The final deliverable are features that can helps users to have safe trip, and T3Go to attract users and bolster the safety and quality of T3Go’s branding.

LO-FI WIREFRAMES

We created the low-fi wireframes based on findings from the interviews and the journey map.

Feature 1: Inform about the In-car SOS System

Quickly introduce the in-car SOS system when the users open the mobile app. Apply card design pattern for grouping various types of information and considering further scalability.

Feature 2: The In-car SOS buttons Status Bar

Use a snackbar (can display information with a small space of area) on the trip ongoing page to update the status (i.e. enabled/disabled) of the in-car SOS buttons during the trip.

Feature 3: The in-car SOS System Alerts and Feedbacks

Alerts in locked and unlocked screens, and in-app alerts allow the user to report emergency/false alarms effectively and help T3Go to react on emergency efficiently.
The control center sends out SOS notifications and dialogs under two types of conditions:
1. After receiving SOS signals from the mobile app or the in-car SOS buttons
2. when:

1). an in-car SOS button is not working
2). the car deviates from the planned route
3). the car unexpectedly stops for a long period of time during the trip

Alert is applied to locked screen, open screen and in-app notification since we expect the users to immediately provide feedback on emergency after receiving the alert.

USABILITY TESTING

We recruited 8 target users and conducted usability testing with them. They were asked to went through low-fi wireframes based on several tasks (car information, report emergency), and then they talked about obstacles, frustrations and suggestions of the wireframes. Frequently asked questions are listed below:
1. Before I get into the car, can I know what does the actual buttons look like?
2. How does the in-car SOS system work and how I can use them to report emergency?

DESIGN ITERATIONS

Based on the results of usability testing, to allow the user to access the information about the in-car SOS system efficiently, we iterated the feature 1 to improve the findability and learnability of the in-car SOS system.

Feature 1: Inform about the In-car SOS System

HI-FI WIREFRAMES

Based on the iteration and T3Go’s branding, we created the hi-fi wireframes and the interactive prototypes. Our final deliverables were presented to the CMO of T3Go and the design team.

Feature 1: Inform about the In-car SOS System

Feature 2: The In-car SOS Buttons Status Bar

Feature 3: The in-car SOS System Alerts and Feedbacks

NEXT STEPS

DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES LEFT

Add a review feature in the mobile app

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS

Create an anonymous review system to encourage users to share their real feelings.
Built up a reward system to allow users to gain coupons by submitting valid reviews.