Introduction

Uber drivers experience high amounts of stress levels while driving for different reasons. Having to concentrate on multiple functions, following navigation, getting to the destination on time, negotiating stressful traffic; all whiles obeying road laws.

It is more than often necessary for the driver to get in touch with the rider while driving; just one of the reasons could be that the rider is waiting in an illegal pick-up spot and the driver wants to notify the rider to move somewhere else.  A survey has revealed that in most times the driver needs to get in touch, whether a phone call or text, it would be in CBD areas at peak times.

It is at these times that the driver needs their hands on the steering wheel and can not afford to have their hands on their phone trying to communicate with a rider. Most drivers reported that this will create an extreme amount of added stress to their work.

Besides the above, it is also illegal to operate one’s phone while driving. Uber drivers risk losing their licenses by operating their phones and as a result, risk losing their jobs as an Uber driver.

Problem

From a survey with Uber drivers, the feedback was with consistent agreement that the user flow for making a call or writing a text to a passenger was too long and frustrating to deal with. It means that the driver spends much too much time with their hands on their phone navigating through 5-6 screens before being able to get in touch with the rider.

Drivers also reported that the screens are not touch-sensitive enough and that they need to tap on the phone icon multiple times before it would respond.

Research

The research was done among Uber drivers in Australia Sydney over 3 weeks.

Forums and Facebook groups with an active community were approached for the initial survey.

The survey focused on driver's experience getting in touch with Passengers or (Pax) as they refer to them.

From the survey outcome, user feedback gave a clear indication that voice activation is the obvious solution.

Further research with a second round of surveys was done to determine where voice activation should be activated within the user flow.

Human-Centered Design

Objective

What is Uber’s solution to ensure that drivers communicate with their passengers in a way that will make it safe, efficient and productive reducing cancelations, angry passengers and frustrated drivers?

We needed to decide needs to discover where in the user flow. voice activation needs to be activated. The main objective is to avoid having to touch the phone while the car is moving.

Since Uber drivers are from a diverse background speaking English with accents from all over the world, the app needed to be clear on what the options are leaving the driver with a simple command as an answer.​​​​​​

Our decicion of where in the user flow voice trigger would be activated was determined by two things.

From user-centric design we learned that the the best place for the voice trigger to be activated would be at the very start where users go online.
The user would be promted to give their permission for voice trigger to be activated.

The second influancing factor is the legal aspect. To avoid opporating your phone while driving, it is important for the voice trigger to be activated at the time the user goes online.

User Flow

The way it was decided where in the user flow voice activation would be activated where again based on user feedback. The solution safest for drivers would be to prompt the driver to activate voice command when going online and thereby activating the device's microphone before going online.

Uber voice will prompt the driver with a question and options to that question to which the driver can simply reply.

Personas

Personas were determined to be from a vast variety of backgrounds but overall drive for Uber as a 2nd or even a third income. Most of them have other responsibilities in terms of work, studies or family and are making use of the extra income as a means to an end.

What does this mean for voice commands?

Different cultural backgrounds meant different English accents and different pronunciations. This suggested an idea to allow drivers to customize their voice command settings to ensure the app response promptly

Findings

An extra ticket was designed for voice command settings.

This would allow each user to customize their commands allowing them to use words that they can pronounce so that the app will respond correctly.