Riders Share
User Research & Consulting
Riders Share Company Background
Launched in 2018 by Guillermo Cornejo, Riders Share is an award-winning startup and the largest peer-to-peer motorcycle sharing platform in the world. Known as “the Airbnb for hassle-free motorcycle rentals”, they offer significantly lower prices than legacy rental shops, as well as a vastly larger vehicle selection. Riders Share recently raised $2M in a Series A round of financing, and they have over 10k users and an equal number of motorcycles listed on their website.
Project Type
3 Week Contract Project
3 Person Team
Role
UX Research & User Testing
Tools
Figma, InVision, Sketch, Photoshop
Introduction
During our kickoff with Riders Share, their initial goals were to increase the overall user rates and decrease onboarding drop-off. Their team recognized that there were areas that needed improvement, but weren’t entirely sure what the largest pain points were from their initial research. They hypothesized that there were issues with a specific part of the onboarding process, but there wasn’t data or user feedback to support it. Riders Share also wanted to connect at a higher rate with their target audience, motorcycle riders aged 55+. Their data showed that they weren’t attracting this user base, but they didn’t know why. Riders Share provided us with the research their team had done around onboarding and user statistics, and we set off to begin the discovery phase!
Research
Competitive Analysis
In case user issues were related to features or rental requirements, we conducted a thorough competitive analysis with other motorcycle rental companies. We discovered a wide range of strategies and features that varied between every company we researched. From this comparison, we saw that Riders Share was meeting the most important MVP (minimum viable product) features used by other successful companies, showing adequacy in this realm. Because of this, we hypothesized that feature inclusions weren’t the cause of our main user issues.
User Testing
Because critical underlying issues hadn’t yet been identified, we decided to begin this discovery process by seeing how real life users move through the booking process. One of our team members *me* was able to use a mutual connection *my adrenaline junkie father* to find riders in a senior motorcycle club, utilizing our target demographic for user testing. We lined up interviews with a mix of riders aged 55+ (5) and millennials (2) in order to understand how users in different age groups interacted with the website, and if there were any technical pain points that might be generational.
UX Moment of the Year:
While conducting onboarding research, I accidentally rented myself a Ducati for the weekend. This is 100% true. Oops?
The Discovery
The Hidden Pain Point
During testing, we tasked users with renting a motorcycle and going through the entire booking process, from bike selection through checkout in order to thoroughly understand any blockers they might experience. During this process, I ran the majority of senior user interviews, and discovered something that shifted the focus of our project and gave us our new primary objective. The statistics were shocking: 3/4 seniors spent an average of 1 minute trying to input calendar dates, and 2/4 seniors could not successfully input calendar dates. We can assume that if the third user wasn’t being tested, they would have dropped off at the calendar stage as well.
What This Means
This was a critical discovery, because it meant that Riders Share might already be reaching their target user base. However, due to technical pain points, senior users literally weren’t able to enter the trackable onboarding process because they couldn’t get past the calendar’s date selection. In other words, they were being blocked before they could even input their information and be included in the Riders Share’s data set.
Define
The calendar discovery was clearly our users’ biggest pain point, and the linchpin of Riders Share’s missing target audience. Redesigning the calendar in a way that was intuitive and highly usable became the new focus of our project.
Problem Statement:
Seniors need a more intuitive and functional calendar in order to successfully and quickly book a bike through Riders Share.
Solution Statement:
By redesigning the calendar, we will see a significant increase in bookings from users aged 55+.
Identifying the User
Based on the insights that I gained from user interviews and Riders Share’s user statistics, I developed two personas reflecting the needs and pain points of their target audience. These two personas represented two distinct types of rider, who had slightly different needs and use cases.
Travis the Traveller
“I need an easy and convenient way to rent a motorcycle online for my vacation.”
Josh the Joyride
“I need a reliable and safe way to find a motorcycle for the occasional joyride down memory lane.”
Design & Test
Calendar Redesign
The first part of the prototype process was conducting research into calendar design systems that were used successfully by major companies. We researched different methods of inputting calendar dates, as well as usability trends in this area. The calendars that we decided to prototype with were modeled after Airbnb and Google’s input structures.
Prototype
Once we concluded our calendar research, we moved these two designs into clickable prototypes dropped into the current website’s design. We then decided that the best way to make sure that we were truly serving our users was to conduct thorough calendar AB testing with our target demographic in order to learn more about senior-specific usability.
Uses “Calendar A”, which has a two-step selection process where the user separately selects the starting and drop off dates
Uses “Calendar B”, which has a selection process that automatically advances from pick up to drop off date selections
AB Testing
The Results
The results from our AB testing were incredibly positive. All of our senior users were able to successfully select dates on both calendars, and the task time went from an average of over 1 minute (until success or drop-off), to under 10 seconds.
Our Recommendations
Based on the way that senior users interacted with the two calendars, our recommendation for Riders Share moving forward was to proceed with Prototype A. During user interviews, I found that 4/6 users made click errors on Prototype B. This didn’t affect the user’s ability to complete the task, but it did add unnecessary steps and increased the task’s completion time. Prototype A had 0 errors for all users, making it the most usable choice for all age groups.
Why This Is Important
In a world that is becoming increasingly dependent on technology, ageism within this space is placing critical members of our society at a disadvantage. Seniors did not grow up with the same technological education that was afforded to Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z. As they enter a later stage in life, their lack of understanding regarding “common” heuristics is causing isolation and blocking them from interacting adeptly with the rest of society.
Implementing user testing that focuses specifically on users in higher age groups allows us to create design systems that are inclusive and intuitive for all users. If we build a system that works for those who are less comfortable with technology, we end up creating better systems for everyone.
Designing systems that create a better society and enrich the lives of ALL of our community members is what UX is really about.
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