
When riders travel to a new city, they often crave authentic local experiences—but they lack personal connections. On the other hand, drivers know and love their city. They want to share their knowledge but don’t have a clear or comfortable way to do so. They are unsure if riders even want recommendations, and it's hard to explain details clearly while focusing on driving. Both sides want to connect but currently, there’s no smooth or reliable way to make that happen.
In this project, we conducted extensive research on riders to find engaging and fun ways for them to connect with Uber drivers to discover niche and authentic local recommendations in cities riders are visiting.
Mentored By:
Ning Ma
Michael Zibin Yuan
Problem



Approach

Background Research
01 Market Analysis


Research Methods
01 Preliminary User Interviews

02 Survey



03 Diary Study


04 Task Observation


05 Semi-Structured Stakeholder Interview

Findings




Design Requirements


Design Ideation

Based on our research, we created a venn diagram based on the three pillars our product should be based on
After brainstorming ideas on sticky notes, we placed each idea onto the venn diagram to see which of the pillars each idea fulfilled.

We created over 60 sketches, each fulfilling all design requirments.

Concept Testing





Storyboard


Hi-Fi Prototype
Flow 1








Flow 2


Flow 3

Usability Testing




Future Directions
