Uber Work Hub

Jun 19

Helping drivers unlock new earning opportunities

Currently, Uber drivers do one “job” at a time, and usually come to Uber for one type of earning (rideshare), or sometimes two (rideshare and Uber Eats). Then while the majority of our drivers work for the rides business, over the last year, I had been starting to look at how Uber drivers could unlock multiple jobs over time. Looking at the long term, we were trying to figure out the best way to introduce new jobs and opportunities to our existing drivers.

The Problem: Enter COVID-19

However, when COVID-19 hit, we started to see business impacted globally. Now more than ever, drivers were looking for more earnings and opportunities, but fewer riders were requesting. So as quickly as possible, our team tried to accelerate the work and concepts we had explored. The question became:

How might we provide drivers with other earning opportunities, as quickly as possible, and leveraging as much existing tech as possible?

Process and my impact

Because I had been working to understand this space of cross-selling, I was immediately asked to take the lead on this product feature. I was the UX lead, owning the design and flow of the entire product, creating the content and a templatized structure for future additional opportunities.

I worked with product managers and operations to understand the variations of this product in local markets globally, engineers to understand the tech limitations to allow us to produce something in a single week, brand designers to tie the visuals with overarching COVID-19 marketing campaigns, and finally, the PR and comms teams to create the visuals for Uber’s public announcements.

Considerations

In order to leverage existing builds and move quickly, we adjusted an existing educational template to become an aggregator for all available opportunities.

Key questions we were:

What tech is available to us in minimal to 0 mobile releases?
How can we have drivers add new ways to earn with the least amount of user friction?
How will new earning opportunities be added and presented to drivers throughout the COVID-19 period?
What is needed to scale this feature in further global markets?

The Work Hub V1

To get this feature to market as quickly as possible (less than 2 weeks!), we designed the page and launched with a minimum of 2 opportunities. At launch, depending on the market, these opportunities included access to Uber Eats, entry into Uber Freight and Uber Works, and entry into an aggregated list of third-party earning opportunities even outside of Uber.

In the weeks following, more opportunities were added and more global cities were added. I was still leading this experience from the design side, and we began the strategic conversation about how this evolves in our post-COVID world.

Stay tuned as more features and improvements roll out.