Careem Captain Mobile App
Careem is known for being a popular ride hailing app worldwide, and while that is true, the Captain or the rider application is what drives the business and is used by the people who are picking people on a daily basis.
On the captain mobile application, we have various bonuses available for the captains to increase engagement and motivate captains to take more rides and earn more.
Problem Statement
How might we incentivize our Captains to take on more rides and efficiently use the incentives program by providing more information.
User Research
We conducted primary research by interviewing Careem Captains in three groups: those who have been with Careem for more than 2 years, those who have been with Careem for 3-6 months, and those who have recently joined (1-3 months). These interviews, conducted via Zoom as remote user testing, included participants from Pakistan, Egypt, KSA, and UAE.
Qualitative Interviews
Group Novice (1-3 Months)
Group Midway (3-6 Months)
Group Veterans (>1 Year)“I was not even aware that Careem had an incentive program. We usually just log in, complete our jobs for the day and log off. There hasn’t been any exploration of the application otherwise.”
“Usually I am not sure that the incentives are available in my region or not. Besides, their KPIs are almost unachievable and even if we somehow manage to complete them, the reward is not worth all that effort.”
“I have taken part in these incentive programs when I was somewhat new as a Captain, but I realized very quickly that they are not at all worth the effort and besides, I never even received the reward I was promised”
Insights
1 No progress tracker in existing design
How would the captains measure their performance?
2 Lack of information
Incentives differ according to location and Captain and car type, this crucial information is not given
3 Too many milestones
Within the incentives, there are too many unachievable milestones and KPIs
4 Criteria unclear
It is not clear what is the criteria of admission for the captains to qualify
Conceptualization
Once I had all the research and insights that was needed, I started thinking of the best way to Educate, Inform and Motivate users into using the incentive program. After several conversations with other stakeholders, our limitation was that we could not offer any bigger monetary rewards
Gamification
In our first iteration, we included the element of gamification in our design. We realized that the current design was too simple, content-heavy and boring and we wanted to make it look more attractive and game-like. So users would have no issues in understanding, and would be motivated by the visual progress upon each ride that was taken. On the right is that first iteration included with the first round of usability testing we conducted with actual users.
Insights showed that our gamification process’ first iteration was a failure. We had made it too game-like that our users (who did not have a habit of playing games on their phones) got even more confused than before. It was back to the drawing board for us.
Exploration
I further explored more types of layouts and design. Sticking to the design system, rather than adding completely new elements, I either chose existing components or redesigned them in a very minor way and used the same colors to ensure that nothing throws the users off-base and they understand immediately.
I designed three options and had rigorous feedback cycles with Product Managers, other designers, developers and other stakeholders to finalize on one approach so I could enhance that further and come up with the best design that includes our gamification and motivates users to use this more.
Final Design
Seeing Results
After the usability testing, we released the app update and pulled in data to use it to make more informed design decisions.
4.7%
Available hours increased
4.6%
Trips per Captain increased
5.3%
Participation increased
Project Learnings
Simplicity is best
The best designs are those which reduce clutter. We realized after multiple iterations and content exploration that the more clutter we reduced, the better the design looked and the easier it was for users to understand it.
Don’t always assume your best design is functional
The age-old debate of form vs function, what good is your beautiful and innovative design, if your users will not understand it? We realized after the first round of usability testing that our innovative gamified design was not at all understood by captains.