CASE STUDY
Envoy is a community-based electric car sharing service and platform, providing electric vehicles as an exclusive amenity to apartments, hotels, and workplaces. Envoy electric vehicles are conveniently located on property with dedicated parking spaces and EV charging stations and can be reserved through the Envoy car sharing app.
ENVOY
CHALLENGE
Design a vehicle-sharing experience that is seamless, intuitive, easy to use, and delightful, taking into account three different types of vehicles and two different types of booking flows.
WHAT WE MADE
iOS and Android electric vehicle-sharing app.
SERVICES
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Interaction design
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UI design
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UX design
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Prototyping
USER RESEARCH & WORKSHOPS
01.
UNDERSTANDING USERS NEEDS
We surveyed and interviewed Envoy’s target users to understand the problems that users had experienced with car and ride-sharing services.
We found that users valued affordability, quality, and ease of use. They believed ride-share services were too expensive and inflexible and that car sharing apps weren’t convenient enough for daily use.
“I want to find an affordable, high quality, and easy to use ride-service to run daily errands.”
02.
STANDING OUT
FROM THE COMPETITION
We learned that users really enjoyed the simplicity of ride-sharing apps in comparison to car-sharing apps so we aimed to simplify our experience similarly. We also wanted the UI to feel fun and exciting to energize users when interacting with the brand but still feel intuitive.
03.
A PRODUCT THE CLIENT LOVES
We worked as an extension to the Envoy team and made sure they were a part of the process from start to finish. In addition to our weekly check-in meetings with our stakeholders and development team, we ran a series of workshops to foster collaboration and transparency. These workshops included whiteboarding sessions and product roadmap card sorting.
DISTILLING A COMPLEX SYSTEM
04.
USER FLOWS
It was crucial for us to map out the paths that users would take to accomplish their goals prior to starting any designs. We needed to consider the edge cases that could occur with car rental experiences. Our goal was to make a complex system seem simple and intuitive for users.
05.
FROM SKETCHES TO WIREFRAMES
TO FINAL DESIGNS
Iterations were an important part of our design process. See below how we moved from sketches, to wireframes, to the final Hi-Fi designs through paper and digital prototyping.
06.
A VISUALLY STRIKING APPLICATION
We amplified Envoy’s current branding to design a vibrant and visually exciting app that was also balanced by good use of whitespace and clear calls-to-action. A detailed design system was created to provide consistency for the user, efficiency for the development team, and easy maintenance for the client.
KEY FEATURES
01.
BOOK IN TWO STEPS
If a user is within the geo-fence of a community when they open the app, a list of available vehicles automatically appear allowing the user to book a vehicle in two steps.
02.
THREE VEHICLE TYPES
We added in the ability to easily navigate the three types of vehicles that Envoy offers: Cars, Scooters, and Bikes.
03.
FLEXIBLE RESERVATIONS
Since flexibility was a necessary requirement for our target users,
we designed a reservation system that handles booking for
now or the future.
04.
YOUR PHONE IS YOUR KEY
The “car key” stays sticky at the bottom of the screen to allow for a comfortable thumb position when users lock and unlock the vehicle, honk a horn, turn on lights, or open the trunk.
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05.
GRAB AND GO WITH QR CODE
We designed the option for a user to simply scan a barcode and book any vehicle. This flow also allows busy users the ability to
book a vehicle in two steps.
OUTCOMES
We visually enhanced Envoy’s current app experience and added a long list of new features without taking away its simplicity. As a part of our efforts to create a seamless booking experience, we reduced the number of steps to book a vehicle to two steps.
We balanced the needs of the stakeholders and development team while keeping the product user-centric.
