How I’d Improve Lyft
I have an on-site interview with Lyft tomorrow. Here’s what I’m bringing to the table.
Lyft has been an app I’ve been using for years. It’s exciting to interview with a company who’s product I’ve used often and daily last summer during my internship.
In this post, I’ll be going over potential design improvements I’d like to make and firsthand usability issues. My goal is to provide information around how I would like to improve Lyft if I were brought on the design team.
Improving the Pickup Process
I remembered — “Wait isn’t there a way to schedule a ride now in Lyft? How do I do that where did that go?
After I click from Line to Lyft, the schedule option in the right of the location bar showed up. I actually had no idea where it went! I thought it was a bug that had disappeared!
Is there any way to provide context to users that scheduled rides only work for Lyft and no other ride types?
I imagine there’s a constraint that doesn’t allow scheduling for other options; however, I believe the scheduling option should be easier and more obvious for users.
The User Flow can be frustrating
Here is the current user flow of Lyft
As you can see, there are a couple steps here. You choose your ride type, set pickup, then set your destination address and request your Lyft. As the user progresses through the process, the bottom bar turns from purple to pink.
I’m trying to figure out what does goal does the bottom button progressing towards pink achieve? How do I know which one is the final one ? Because it could potentially be “Set destination”. I know it is supposed to create a sense of progression for the user, but for me personally (and I’m sure other users as well), it creates anxiety because I’m not sure which button can be the final one. What happens if the user is colorblind?
Moreover what happens if the user needs to change their ride type or pickup address before finally requesting the Lyft? Then they need to go back and complete the process again.
Proposal
To address this, I’d allow to user to change ride type and pickup address before hitting “Request Lyft” without having to go back through the user flow and hitting the purple buttons to get to the final confirmation screen.
Set limits on how far you request a Lyft
This is self-explanatory and may be low-importance, but why am I allowed to request a Lyft in New York when I’m all the way in California.
Allow drivers and passengers to message customer service and report incidents in app.
After looking at the Facebook page, it looks like there needs to be a better system put in place to facilitate communication between Lyft Service and Passengers or Drivers reporting negative incidents.
This is a tough problem to solve given there are so many drivers and passengers compared to customer service representatives and employees. But to start — why not create a messaging or ticket system in the app to let people report tickets in the app? Currently in order to place help tickets, you need to contact support through the web help center.
It would be easier to have an in-app option for this.
Those are just some thoughts for now. In the future, I’d like to run a usability test and conduct user research in order to understand pain points users and experiences and test various designs with them.
If given the opportunity, I’d be more than happy to join the team.
