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digital produckt design

RideAmigos — Simplifying Commuting by Reinventing Mobility

mobile_reference_rideamigos

In a nutshell

By creating a unified visual language and applying a strong storytelling approach, we not only created a memorable brand but also helped RideAmigos to achieve their business goals and convert more commuters into long-term users. Our work helped RideAmigos to double website traffic, double conversions and significantly increase the quality of incoming leads.

RideAmigos Business Challenge

Create and establish a digital brand through visual storytelling and a purpose-driven design approach.

Project overview

Duration

2018 — 2020

Team setup

cross-functional team of 2 software developers, 2 UX/UI designer, 2 mobile developers 1 QA engineer and 1 product owner

Technologies

Xcode, Swift, CoreLocation, CoreMotion, Android Studio, Java, JavaScript, Angular, Node.js

Services

UX/UI design mobile app development frontend development QA & testing

About RideAmigos

RideAmigos is a US-based commuter engagement hub, used by businesses and communities to help commuters overcome parking, traffic and pollution issues. Thousands of organizations, including top employers, government agencies, and universities use RideAmigos to understand and incentivize commuters to make smarter choices—reducing congestion, parking demand, and environmental impact, all while improving wellness. RideAmigos’ powerful platform and programs bring together a broad range of fragmented mobility solutions with behavioral science to change the way the world commutes.

Challenges & objectives

The RideAmigos.com platform was already offering an excellent service, but there were significant challenges in terms of usability, design, and visual language. For their next leap forward – becoming a leading global commuting services provider as rapidly as possible – RideAmigos established some goals: enhance the user experience, create a more recognizable brand, and design a digital product that consumers would love to use.

Parkside Interactive was presented with the following major tasks:

01

Unifying the mobile and web app’s visual language through UX and UI design
02

Applying visual storytelling to make the service more understandable
03

Refreshing the RideAmigos brand and giving it a unique appeal
04

Showcasing RideAmigos personality and as a fun and easy-to-use platform

Our solution

To create value for the client, we aligned all our actions to integrate the user experience with RideAmigos main business goals. To this end, we first evaluated all business-relevant KPIs and then streamlined the user experience design efforts according to those metrics. To get everybody onto the same page right from the start, we focused on quickly visualizing relevant possible solutions as design prototypes.

“We are thrilled to work with Parkside as they provide an integrated approach between UI/UX and Engineering. This allowed our engineers to implement a user interaction that created emotional attachment and a more human experience. Parkside’s contribution sparked an innovative solution that allows people to benefit from new mobility modes.”

Soren Eilertson
CEO RideAmigos

RideAmigos delivers advanced commute detection

RideAmigos, based in Los Angeles, (CA/USA), is a platform for commuter management solutions. The platform is used by governmental, corporate, and campus commuting networks. The main features include multi-mode travel dashboards, incentives and reward systems, and intelligent ride mapping. One essential core functionality of the platform is trip detection and confirmation. With the RideAmigos companion app, users can log their commutes on a daily basis on their phones.

The RideAmigos vision is to make commuter transportation management as easy as possible while providing employees with a better commute, thus creating a better world.

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Simultaneously working on product design and the universal visual language development

We faced a significant challenge: creating a visual concept for the RideAmigos platform that followed a comprehensive visual narrative while simultaneously working on the user experience design of the web platform. Then the actual RideAmigos brand should be crystallized out.

Backward design engineering – from product to brand

Ideally, when we are asked to design a product, we work on the basis of an existing brand. Usually, the brand is there – the logo, colors, typography, and visual storytelling. Then the products would follow. We decided to start with the web platform, as it was the central hub and seemed like the most natural place to begin.

Visual storytelling – the concept of utopian environmentalism

To make the RideAmigos platform and furthermore the brand itself very recognizable, we created a concept of utopian environmentalism that brought clarity and focus to the RideAmigos vision. Step by step, we introduced illustrations that gave the platform its own visual language along with a more distinctive and unique appeal. Next, we created a lot of the user interface, defined the color set, chose typography and applied icons. We kind of kick-started a unified RideAmigos visual language.

“With RideAmigos the process was unique because the brand design was driven by the product. That was quite an exciting challenge.”

Urszula Małecka
Art Director

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After finishing with the web platform, we took on the companion app and also the official RideAmigos corporate website at the same time. The challenge was to expand the visual language of utopian environmentalism, moving out from the RideAmigos web platform to all digital venues.

Evidence-based design – user testing as a success factor

To make sure all visual language and user interface design activities in the companion app lead to great overall user experience and meet user expectations, we ran extended user test sessions. We tried out different branding and UI elements to find out which ones worked for the testing groups and which ones didn’t. This process allowed us to focus and refine the direction of the look and feel of the user interface of the platform and the companion app.

Amigoland — Adding more personality is the key to success

We realized something as we dove more deeply into the commuting app and the actual website: adding more personality to the illustrations and using them as a means to tell a story around utopian environmentalism is key to the overall success of the brand.

User persona meets visual storytelling

We came up with a set of beautiful characters who represent the typical commuters who use the RideAmigos trip detection app. We placed these commuters in everyday situations like traveling on a bus or riding a bike (both clearly happy with their commutes). This enabled us to explain different app functions, for instance how to swipe to access more data.

The importance of app onboarding

We also created charming characters that we used to make the app’s onboarding process a great experience, thus lowering the bounce rate. Furthermore, we added more iconography to the statistics section and combined everything into the final website design in the end.

End result

Our final solution encompasses several advantages — a memorable and visually appealing brand design, an exceptional UX and a simple user interface for the mobile app.

The visual language of the mobile app and the web app were unified, and visual storytelling was also used to make the service more understandable. The brand was generally more emotionally charged and the fun of using it was put in the foreground.

In the six months following the launch of the redesigned mobile app and platform, RideAmigos saw increases in adoption and engagement across the board.

+43
in registered users*
250%
more mobile app users*
288%
trips logged by app users
115%
higher website traffic**
+52%
in lead conversion**
3x
generated lead quality**