ISU - SAFE RIDE
Redesigning a Safe Ride Experience
Work
ISU - SAFE RIDE
Redesigned a safe ride app feature to enhance the
usability for students.
The Safe Ride feature in the Iowa State Safe app provides essential free rides for students between 6 PM and 5:30 AM, but usability challenges have limited its effectiveness. To address this, the research team is analyzing these issues and redesigning the UI to make the service more intuitive and accessible, ensuring students can easily use it when needed.
Info
Role
UX Researcher
UX Designer
UI Designer
Team
Aditya (That’s Me!)
Harsh Sangani
Jiwon Kim
Tian Yao
Duration
6 Weeks
Mentor
Michael C. Dorneich
Problem
How might we improve the safe ride-booking experience?
The current safe ride app has limitations that hinder its effectiveness in providing a reliable and secure transportation experience for students. Key issues include restricted service areas confined to campus boundaries, the absence of ride progress tracking, unreliable estimated arrival times during peak hours, and safety concerns arising from designated pick-up locations that require users to walk to potentially unsafe areas. These challenges reduce the app's usability, reliability, and ability to ensure a safe and convenient experience for its users.
Outcome
The redesign of the SafeRide app significantly enhanced the user experience, resulting in a 28% increase in ease of use, a 50% improvement in interface consistency, and a 36% boost in user feedback satisfaction.
Redesign Process:
Re-designed the SafeRide app booking feature using a user-centered design approach.
Conducted semi-structured interviews and applied affinity diagramming to gather and analyze user requirements.
Re-designed the system interface to align with identified user needs and pain points.
Developed a high-fidelity mock-up prototype to visualize the improved design.
Conducted usability evaluations with target users to validate the effectiveness of the redesign.
PROJECT APPROACH
Over 6 weeks, We have led the end-to-end human-centred design process for redesigning the safe Ride app feature aimed to improve usability, ensuring that students can easily and reliably access the service for their safety.
My process focused on the new user onboarding journey and key tasks for experienced users, including home, profile, journal entries, insights, vision boards, and habits pages. This approach ensured a curated path to healthier habits and consistent self-development practices.
The project timeline included:
2 Weeks: User research, problem redefinition through affinity mapping, and strategizing solutions and key features.
2 Week: Mapping the user journey for new users and developing the app's information architecture, wireframes and prototypes
2 Weeks: User testing and Evaluation
User Research
We conducted semi-structured interviews with five participants, including undergraduate, master's, and PhD students, to gain insights into their challenges and needs.
An interview protocol was carefully developed to guide the discussions, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of their experiences. Participants were recruited for both in-person and online interviews to accommodate diverse preferences and schedules.
