Design research for Uber Hero
Building a platform for human-assisted onboarding
As driver requirements became more complex, they struggle to sign up on their own. Especially in low-tech literate markets, such as India and Latin America, driver growth is dependent on users called Dosters. Dosters are individuals who help drivers signup for Uber and create a business by earning money through lead generation and the referral bonuses in Uber’s markets.
The needs of Dosters and beyond
The Doster business model was organically created in these low-tech markets. Some operate on their own, organically finding drivers to recruit and convert, and some have full-staffed locations, complete with street recruiters and support staff, tracking as drivers completed the signup process and started driving. Before the product design team got involved, there existed a bare bones app that some Dosters were using, but it did not adequately support their workflow.
In almost all cases, they resorted to handwriting all the data and tracking their prospective drivers’ progress in Google spreadsheets. This obviously highlighted many compliance issues (not to mention usability issues), and we saw opportunities to build a brand new app to address the users’ needs.
Then even outside of those low-tech markets, we recognized that human help is essential for driver onboarding success. Whether drivers contact Uber for help, or it’s mandatory for them to visit Uber Greenlight Hubs at some point in the signup process, we noticed that those who visit a Greenlight Hub, tend to stay longer and be more successful as drivers.
Breaking down Uber’s markets by licensed vs. traditional vs. low tech market
Defining the strategy, vision, and MVP
After launching a devoted product team to support this effort, product design jumped in as well. We worked very closely with PMs and an engineering manager to propose the entire strategy and vision of this acquisition and support channel, and began scoping out the road to an MVP for the newly branded “Uber Hero”.
Thanks to insights and initial research, we had a high-level task list to start out, but in order to prioritize for an MVP and a Beta launch, we designed a forward-looking experience and partnered very closely with UX research to test out a prototype on existing and new “Heroes”.
We started by creating flows for the key tasks, and laying out the architecture for the dashboard and overall navigation.
Then moving on to wireframes, we wanted to leverage as much of the UX and tech from the driver onboarding flow, and adjust based off of Hero’s needs.
We kept a few considerations in mind as we designed the wires.
How do general onboarding driver features change when someone else is onboarding a driver on their behalf? How do we optimize for speed, clarity, privacy...
Many heroes need to recruit drivers out on the streets, where data speed and bandwidth can be very slow. What features can we propose for offline work?
What features and data are needed to build trust with the heroes, while also reducing fraud cases?
The prototype
The research study was first run in Cairo, and in a few months, we designed the full prototype (in Arabic!) and worked closely with the researchers and product team to create the study.
The full prototype’s key actions included:
Hero sign up and creating an account with Uber
Add a driver flow (that could work offline!)
Home dashboard with summary of total earnings, team activity, and driver lead progress
Earnings visibility and full breakdown
Lead management and tracking drivers’ progress
Sign up
Add a driver flow
Home dashboard
Earnings dashboard
Lead management
In the end, the research study and prototype gave the entire team an opportunity to watch and interview the existing heroes and their teams. Then showing them the prototype, it was extremely helpful in understanding overall usability and defining the prioritized feature set for the Beta product and MVP launches.