UX Design | UX Research | Visual Design
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An app that helps students and working individuals find trustworthy carpool buddies based on their locations and routes.
Figma Link: ShareWheels High-Fidelity Prototype
UX Researcher, UX Designer, Graphic Designer
June 10, 2024 - June 14, 2024
As I sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic going out of Honolulu at 5pm on a Tuesday, I look to my left and right and see each car with only one person inside. I think to myself, "How much faster would we be going right now if there were half as many cars on the road and twice as many people in each car?"
Most people are willing to carpool, but have a hard time finding and connecting with classmates or coworkers that share similar commuting routes and schedules.
This issue is especially prevalent in large companies and schools, where it is difficult to manually identify potential matches amongst thousands of individuals.
An app that facilitates convenient carpooling opportunities by helping users efficiently find and connect with nearby classmates or coworkers with similar commuting routes and schedules.
I interviewed 6 participants and surveyed over 50 participants on Oahu that commute to different companies and schools. Through this representative group, I found the main pain points and reasons preventing people from carpooling.
Your carpool options are limited to the tiny portion of people you actually know in your company/school.
Out of the people that are willing to carpool, it is difficult to find someone that lives nearby and leaves at the same times as you.
It takes too much time and effort to manually search for, filter through, and connect with potential carpool matches.
You may feel apprehensive about carpooling with strangers.
For the MVP, I decided to focus on mitigating the top four reasons for why people don't carpool.
The flow is simple and straightforward – answer basic questions, create an account, view list of your potential carpool matches, and then message your carpool matches.
Click through the prototype or see link here: ShareWheels High-Fidelity Prototype
These features directly target the main reasons people do not to carpool, based on my earlier research.
Through thoughtful user research and problem-solving, ShareWheels was created as a comprehensive approach to addressing carpooling challenges. Here is what I learned along the way and some next steps I would take if I were to continue this project.
With less than a week to conduct user research and design the high-fidelity prototype for ShareWheels, I learned how to prioritize features and streamline design iterations efficiently. Overcoming these challenges underscored the importance of balancing speed with quality in delivering a user-centered product under time constraints.
Conduct usability testing in person or via video call with participants that commute to get specific feedback on areas to improve.
Ideate different iterations and options to improve the design based on the feedback from the usability testing.
Do another round of usability testing to verify the issues that have been resolved and gather any further feedback.
