Overview

Most Indian suburbs rely on Cabs for their day to day commute. Since Meru Cabs provides the option to book Cabs from the app, it is more popular amongst Indian users.

Problem Statement

• Higher cancellation fee for both passenger & driver
• Can't answer a calls from the driver in the app
• No emergency service
• Sometinmes riding is not safe specially for women
• Meru Cabs currently does not have a specific feature to help people with hearing impairment
• Driver calls the passenger before coming to pickup location and ask for location and then cancel the trip
• Driver make user wait for long hour even after accepting ride and then they cancel it

Solution Statement

• Driver can see the place of delivery with request ID
• Driver can check specific kilometers
• If driver cancel ride even after accepting it, they must provide a specific valid reason for canceling request
• Better safety features for women passengers
• User can check govt. ID and driver details before the ride
• Cancellation fees depends on valid reason

Behind the Design

In a city like Hyderabad, I’m a frequent rider of both Meru and Ola, I had a chance to compare their services firsthand. From the experience, I started to think in a way that how to make them even more easier to book a cab and make payment. I’ve gone through the design and the experience and I met some pain points that we could solve. So I took the redesign project as a design exercise.

Design Process

Project Timeline

What I want to do is to make it easier for the hearing impaired passengers to book and get their rides, and encourage them to be independent.

User Survey

This research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, andother feedback methodologies.

From their conversation, what I learned was,

What did I understand from this?

• It is hard to get bookings confirmed on Meru since the drivers cancel it immediately after trying to call them.
• It is difficult to explain proper direction on the text and most of the time the drivers do not see or acknowledge their texts as they are in the middle of driving.
• Have to rely on someone else to book their rides and talk to drivers. This reduces their confidence to go and try getting a ride by themselves.

Competitive Analysis

Right now I was able to find only two apps that had dedicated features for the hard of hearing users; Uber and OLA

SWOT Analysis

Define

Decide on who we want to design for and what we want to help them do.

User Personas

Persona - 1 : Frequent Rider

Personas - 2 : Occasional Rider

Empathy Mapping

User Journey Map

Ideate

Come up with different solutions that might be useful to people.

User Flow

This research focuses on understanding use behaviours, needs and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.

Information Architecture

Design

A solutions-based approach to finite problem statement and a conceptual prototype.

Wireframes

Images

Onboarding Screens

Login screen

• The registration process has been considerably reduced and simplified
• Users can sign up with Facebook or google
• An OTP ill be sent to the user's mobile number for security purposes

Home screen

• Home provides you current locations of yours and cars moving around you on the map

Create a Trip and Search Driver

• After finalizing drop off location, user can select which cab he wantsto use
• According to cab selection, near by driver will popupon screen
• User can accept or reject aride if he wants
• User can alsoselect which payment method he want to use like credit or debit card, UPI, google pay or cash.

My Learnings

I learnt a lot about accessibility and what problems people face for the tasks that seem otherwise simple. The biggest challenge was to make the accommodations for accessibility without affecting the existing user flow of the app.

Accessibility

Even though I have considered only the hearing impaired passengers for this study, I realized that there were other people who faced similar problems regardless if they were deaf or not. So I tried to not make the features too specific that only the people with the said disabilities use them, but anyone trying to book the cab will be helped.