Mobility’s Product Principles

The 4 things we keep in mind when building Mobility

In designing our current product Mobility, we defined our product principles, a set of principles that helps us stay true to our product vision and the needs of users. The vision of mobility is to solve congestion in Trinidad and Tobago thereby giving all travellers great experiences. Our product principles are subject to change as we continue to learn more about our users and their problems.

Product Principles

1. Teach values
2. On-board for life
3. Minimize engagement
4. Design for trust

Teach values

Our approach to helping drivers stems from our belief that transportation systems are poorly designed and that they can be fixed. The service should surface these beliefs to users and persuade users that positive change is possible. The service should allow users to envision a world where transportation is hassle free and where Mobility plays a key role in making this come to pass. The service should also inform users of the behaviours that help us get out of each other’s way and affirm those who adopt those behaviours. The service should use the user’s current behaviours and current context to inform this dialogue.

On-board for life

Users are always learning. From the moment they first use the service to the point when they become regular users it is likely that there are aspects and functions of the services that are unknownst to them. We acknowledge this by utilising what Scott Berkun calls ‘pogressive discoverability’. This means that we shall share the capabilities of the service with the user at the right time.

Users at varying levels of experience with Mobility will have different features emphasised or highlighted to them. We will share only one new idea at a time to increase retention of information. These elements will help users to feel confident about the actions they take and feel in control of their experience.

Minimize Engagement

We will never force unnecessary engagement between the user and our service. We recognise that our users are busy and have limited time to devote to managing relationships with the numerous services they use daily. Every notification or message we send is an interruption to their day. We shall only engage them when we are certain that we can add value to their current experience. This means that we use notifications sparingly and only require user intervention when absolutely necessary.

Mobility will do the heavy lifting for the user. The service will learn a user’s behaviour and preferences over time to minimize inputs. The service will ask users to input information only when absolutely necessary and will remember previous choices.

In copy-writing we will use short phrases with simple and jargon-free words. By keeping messages and notifications brief, and keeping vocabulary simple users will spend less time getting what they need from the service.

Design for trust

Users will only make Mobility a daily habit if they feel that they can trust the service. In everything we do, we should build trust with our users and purposely build it into the long term on-boarding process.

There are many ways we can design for trust but these are the most important—

1. Ensure that our recommendations are accurate and only share them if they are in a user’s best interest to follow it. This includes knowing where our product starts and finishes and only offering assistance at moments when we can be helpful.
2. While it’s our job to know a user’s routine better than them, we shall not take advantage of this for monetary gain or make users uncomfortable because of this.
3. Don’t command users to take a course of action or choose a
   particular option. While some choices can be overwhelming, people expect to be able to express their independence and freedom of choice in all that they do.
4. Never lie to a user. Never, ever, not about anything, ever, at all.