Mytaxi Gold Rallye

2015, Product Designer, Mobile & Web

As the biggest taxi hailing app in Europe & South America, mytaxi (rebranded to FREE NOW) (incl. Beat, Kapten & Clever Taxi) has several million app downloads, over 15 million users and more than 100.000 drivers on the streets. The service is available in more than 100 cities across 13 countries. I joined mytaxi in 2015 as an additional force to build up the design department. As a small team of 2 designers, we managed to sharpen awareness of good product design, to grow the design team, to take over responsiblity for more than 10 products and to push product innovation.

Identifying the problem

By looking at drivers using the mytaxi service, we experience a wide range of performance differences (based on KPIs). While the service usage grows on a positive note, the gap between high performance drivers (frequent users) and low performance drivers (less frequent users) is also constantly expanding. As a result, potential jobs are not taken which is lowering the overall performance rate.

Defining the goals

Increasing the performance of drivers appears to be a simple and achievable goal, however, this solution is also linked to various parameters. One of our main goals was to define incentives which could influence the mindset of a driver in order to create a positive impact on his/her performance. This could potentially narrow the above mentioned gap and resonate the general performance rate alike.

Additionally, the raised datasets could support us to build up a spectrum of drivers who are segmented by performance. Understanding which engaging mechanisms work properly might aid in adjusting our future campaigns and features in order to achieve a better outcome altogether.

Incentivized experiences (however they are defined) are always a good way of catching the attention of users. By implementing such experience to the mytaxi service, new drivers are more likely to join the mytaxi fleet in order to enjoy the benefits.

Facing the challenges

When talking about incentivizing or challenging the participants of a process to reach certain goals we are approaching the topic of ‘gamification’. By adding gamelike principles to the mytaxi environment we created a big challenge for us.

Driving a taxi in the common sense is usually not known to be associated with playing a game.

Drivers are suddenly confronted with completely new mechanisms which are different to the commonly known taxi experience. Therefore, changing the mindset, sharpening the understanding and simplifying the experience to encourage participation was indeed a huge task.

Setting the framework

Before we started working on this feature we wanted to set up a framework. We gathered data across all mytaxi countries regarding the performance of drivers. We then defined the rules for the experience.

Because of the different market requirements we concentrated on a flexible system which was based on points for certain actions. This would allow for different stakeholders to adjust the rules based on their market needs. To encourage and motivate drivers to participate in this process we implemented intermediate goals (bronze, silver and gold – which can have individual incentives/rewards each). This was to generate immediate feedback and encourage the driver to continue participating.

Research

Not long after the initial meetings and creative sessions we started creating as well as developing a high fidelity mockup to gather first test results. In cooperation with the driver service, I gathered participants from all performance segments. Usability tests were set up to monitor the experience during the usage and to interview the drivers individually regarding their impression.

This helped us to continue our work progress and implement an iterative process based on the feedback of our target group.

Outcome

After the first scribbles, wireframes and high fidelity mockups, we started designing the actual screen flow. This involved working closely with all stakeholders and the development department.

The following screens are the result of multiple iterations.

Insights

After having launched this feature and after the live testing phase had concluded, we sent out a survey asking for feedback from our participating drivers and taxi companies. The involvement exceeded our expectations and the majority of responses were excellent. A thorough analysis of the gathered data soon confirmed the expected success. During the live phase, tours per driver increased by 9% on average (based on all participating countries). New registrations rocketed by 68% on a monthly climax until halfway through the live phase and then slightly dropped down to 47% at the beginning of the following month. The number of active drivers during this phase was equivalent to the number of new registrations – increasing the conversion rate to nearly 100%.

Conclusion

In comparison to other campaigns/features with the same goals, the Gold Rallye still was not performing well enough to be compatible with other campaigns. A potential cause may be due to different triggers that have caused this particular feature to fail. However, the overall positive outcome proved a certain potential in such mechanism after all.

With the first gamified experience in the mytaxi app, we were successful in creating a foundation for future projects that intend to move in the same direction.

"We launched a feature that rewarded our drivers for their exceptional performance and helped us to increase our service quality by significant numbers. Alex worked hard to get this feature on the road and never left us hanging."

Frank Alexander Szyperrek

Design Manager

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