capstone
Case Study
MODE: Rideshare
RESEARCH: Getting behind the wheel
Step one: engage firsthand. This meant a few hundred hours driving for one of the major rideshare companies. While I’ve been a passenger many times, the early mornings, rush hours, and late nights proved invaluable to learning subtleties of the experience. I quickly learned that the “user” I needed to engage is not just the passenger.
3 Users need to be considered at all times:
The Passenger
The Driver
The Corporate Employee
I’m a 30ish year old white, cis, able-bodied male, so I have extremely limited insights into the experiences of more vulnerable communities. In my own experience, many occasions arose where I wasn’t necessarily in deep fear of my safety, but more so felt like I was out options to respond to increasingly uneasy situations.
I can only guess how it would feel if I was even less comfortable asserting boundaries. One very intoxicated passenger’s disorienting requests culminated in asking me to park, and come upstairs with him. Another intoxicated man, particularly large and less than in control of his movements, refused to take no for an answer in something as minor as music volume.
Many drunk passengers can be just fine, sometimes even charming, and I realized that intoxication isn’t even the issue. The issue is the attention and risk it takes to manage an increasingly problematic person: that distracts you from being a good driver. Managing the potential of a bad situation distracts you from attending to the rider’s needs in the ways you actually are responsible for. In the case of most drivers, you want to go the extra mile (not just a pun) for their preferences. This doesn’t even mention attending to your own needs.
These uncomfortable situations alerted me to the three-user framework: what would I do if a situation did escalate? What could an employee at the company do with the tools available to them? What could I do if a passenger seemed like a future risk for other drivers? I’m generally comfortable de-escalating conflicts and asserting myself as necessary, and I felt disarmed at times as a rideshare driver.
What would drivers do if they’re already at risk due to social epidemics like patriarchy? I tested the company’s system, reporting the events and my concerns about some risky passengers, but only received a boiler-plate reply, with no assurances about responses of any kind.
What was I going to say, “They demanded music aggressively?”
There had to be a better way.
USER Interviews