How Uber Designs
This article was originally outlined in 2017, when I was Head of Product Design at Uber. As such, this article refers to a team, and a time, nearly three years past. While much has changed in the company since then, based on what I know about the team today, many of the perspectives put forth in this article are still relevant.
Uber’s goal is to deliver transportation experiences that are convenient, reliable, safe and affordable for people across the world. This is as much a human challenge as it is a technical one. After all, every day millions of people in cities across the world count on Uber to get them where they need to go.
Different people, different cities, different needs.
In this article I provide insight into six key considerations the Uber Design team took into account when designing the worldwide Uber experience. Every one of these considerations came into play when we designed — whether for a small feature or a large project.
Let’s look at them one by one.
Interactions
First, there are the three interactions that govern the Uber experience of every rider and every driver: Human to Computer, Human to City, and Human to Human.
1. Human to Computer Interaction
This is the typical work often created by product designers; screen-based design that marries great information architecture with compelling interaction, visual, and motion design. A good example of human computer interaction is this embedded HTML5 widget released in 2016.
What I like about this example is that it uses motion and animation to help users successfully complete their workflow. And it doesn’t have a map, which is interesting, because the driver’s arrival time is typically reinforced in an obvious way via their location on a map. In the mapless design above, the driver’s estimated time of arrival is instead reinforced via a visual approximation of the driver’s location. Hard problem, beautiful solution.
2. Human to City Interaction
When you request a ride via Uber, you must interface with the city to get to the driver. And depending on the city, your interface will differ wildly. In New York, for example, your path to the driver is relatively unencumbered. It’s you, the sidewalk, the curb, and the car. However, in some cities in India, the interface is entirely different. In the scene below you can see how complicated a city street in Kolkata can be. The line between street and sidewalk is entirely blurred, traffic carries a continuous pulse, and people are ever present. Every city across the world is unique in this regard. Designing experiences that connect the rider and driver through the interface of the city requires the ability to handle a multitude of context-specific variables that change based on the unique environment, culture and time of day.
3. Human to Human Interaction
Ultimately, Uber is about connecting people, placing riders and drivers together in a mutually beneficial, respectful, and safe experience. To facilitate that, understanding human to human interaction is essential. Trust and safety were, and and I assume still are, the most important element of design at Uber. For example, my team released driver compliments which allow riders to provide additional positive feedback to 5 star drivers. Likewise, we published a set of guidelines to encourage better interaction between riders and drivers. After my time at Uber, the company has made an even greater effort to address safety through improved policy coupled with in-product safety feature improvements.
Infrastructures
Next, Uber designers must consider problems and opportunities related to different infrastructures that support the cities in which Uber operates: the built infrastructure, the technical infrastructure, and the political infrastructure.
4. City Infrastructure
To design the optimal transportation experience Uber designers need to account for how cities are uniquely configured. As an example, in a number of cities, Uber works with port authorities to design the flow of travelers from the plane, through the airport, and then towards traffic. This is quite common at most airport. An even more ambitious experiment occurred after my time at Uber. They built a kiosk directly into the Toronto airport that allows people to request a ride without downloading the app.
5. Technical Infrastructure
Another consideration taken into account is technical infrastructure, things like data download speed and GPS. Below is a map of the United States broad 4G penetration. You can easily download a lot of Netflix, YouTube, Facebook in the US.
Now let’s take a look at India. Not a lot of high data download speed. To resolve this, design teams at Uber must think about ways to make Uber more accessible to folks with low bandwidth. Some concept ideas we worked on during my time at Uber included ride requests vis SMS, for example.
6. Regulatory Infrastructure
The last consideration is one that exists everywhere in the world and yet is always different in its particulars: regulatory infrastructure. In many cities the municipal government tries to reduce congestion, for example by allowing odd or even license plates into city centers on different days. This presents a design challenge to create an Uber experience for drivers that helps them make a good living within such a restriction. It’s an interesting design challenge, and every city has unique types of regulatory challenges that must be taken into account.
I hope this article helps provide insight into the considerations that, when I was at Uber, we accounted for in every design project. Designing for the unique needs and idiosyncrasies of cities, humans, technical infrastructure and policy provided a rich set of challenges.
Over the years I’ve learned lessons about work and life from great leaders and through challenging experiences at some of the world’s most successful and innovative companies. This has helped me grow and become a more experienced human. Now, it’s time to give back. To do so, I’m sharing my knowledge, insights, and perspective on design, leadership, business, and life. Hope you find it useful.
