Case Study: Lime Scooter App— Reservations

Jacob Ottesen
Prototypr
Published in
6 min readOct 1, 2018
Disclaimer: I am not an employee of Lime and this does not represent the official strategic direction of Lime.
Executive Summary: 
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During this case study, I worked on designing a reservation feature to allow busy Lime riders to have a dependable way of transportation through Lime's scooter services.

Intro

Lime scooters recently entered the streets of Salt Lake City. While living in Salt Lake I enjoyed using the scooter service many times. However, I often have the following problem: I find a scooter close to me on the map. Then, as I get closer, I see another Lime rider pick up the same scooter I was searching for.

During this redesign, I wanted to explore if there was a feature to solve this problem.

The Process

Research

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Before diving into this problem, I wanted to 1.) find out if other riders are facing this problem 2.) and understand the implications of the problem 3.) and identify other problems users are facing.

I started by reading reviews on the app in the app store. This helped me gathered feedback from Lime riders. After this, I met face to face with friends that use Lime scooters on a weekly basis.

Apple Store App Reviews

Research Findings:

  • Busy Lime riders do not feel confident that a scooter will still be at the location by the time they get there
  • Lime riders walk 0.5–1.5 miles to find a scooter
  • Lime riders want the ability to rent multiple scooters for a group on one phone (check out the case study for this problem)
  • If Lime riders can’t get a scooter in time they will find a more dependable form of transportation
  • In a survey conducted by Lime, results showed that 55% of riders are using scooters to commute to/from work/school

The Problem

Lime riders in a time crunch have no way to ensure that they can find an available scooter.

Persona

Rachel is a 25-year-old graphic designer working at an agency in Boston. She enjoys photography, exploring the city and socializing with friends. She typically uses Uber but has started to try out Lime scooters. To her, the app seems simple and easy to locate the scooters around the city.

Rachel’s Journey Map:

  • Rachel is looking to get across the city for lunch with some friends
  • She gets on the Lime app and finds a scooter about a mile away
  • As she is walking she sees the scooter at the end of the block
  • As she gets closer she sees another Lime rider walk up to the scooter and takes it
  • Rachel ends up calling for an Uber because she is late for lunch now

Ideation

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I started my ideation process by creating a specific design question based on the research I found. Below I looked at the current Lime app user flow for renting a scooter, this allowed me to understand the layout even more.

Current Lime App Flow
Design Question: How might we ensure busy Lime riders can feel confident that they will find an available scooter?

Potential feature solution: When Lime riders reach a certain distance from the scooter selected, the app will give them an option to reserve the scooter for a certain price.

Things I considered:

  • What is a fair price?
  • How close is a fair distance for reserving a scooter?
  • Will the reserve price still help the business make money?
  • Are riders willing to pay the extra fee to reserve the scooter?

I sketched out a storyboard to visualize the interactions with this feature.

Storyboard sketching

Why this idea?

To me I feel like there are a few main value propositions for the business and the end customer:

  • Customer trust — with the ability to guarantee an available scooter, Lime riders will trust the service as a dependable way of transportation.
  • Profit maximization — through unused scooters being reserved for a price, the business will increase revenue.
  • Product differentiation — through creating a more reliable form of transportation this feature will help separate Lime from other scooter competitors such as Bird or Spin.
Diagram showing the interaction

Pricing the reservation

Currently, Lime scooters cost $1.00 to unlock and $0.15 a minute to continue riding. If the rider can reserve the scooter from 0.5 miles away then the price of the reservation depends on how long it takes for the rider to get to the scooter. If the average rider takes 15 mins to walk 0.5 to the scooter than that would cost 15 mins * $0.15 = $2.25. Therefore, a fair price for a reservation could be $3.00. That way the business would make an extra $0.75 per reservation.

New things to consider:

  • How do you ensure that riders get to the scooter within 15 minutes of being reserved?
  • Would a countdown timer solve that problem?
  • What if they want to turn off this feature?
  • Should there be an option to reserve if you are already within 0.5 miles of the selected scooter?

Validating the idea

I mocked up 3 different screens and added each to a separate prototype. I did some qualitative testing on these screens and it seemed people had the easiest time with Option B because the price was clear and the description was short.

I conducted a similar test but for Lime riders within the 0.5-mile ratio of the selected scooter. Option B did best during this round of multivariate tests. Test participates said that Option A had text and they wouldn’t read it.

Testing the timer

I tested out the full user flow from reservation to expired time with 5 participates.

Research Findings:

  • Users understand why there was a required time to get to the scooter
  • Users want this feature to be optional
  • Users felt 15-minutes was enough time to get to the scooter
  • Users want to know they have a 15 minute time limit on the reservation
Timer Count Down — User Flow

Users exploring the feature

To help users be aware of the time limit on the reservation feature, I added a first-time feature interaction. This would allow the user to explore the reservation feature for the first time without committing to it.

First time feature interaction — user within 0.5 of scooter

After the user has interacted with the feature for the first time the app will just give the option to reserve for $3.

Optional feature

I added a way for users to turn on/off this feature in the settings page.

Things to consider:

  • How often will users turn off this feature?
  • Is turning the feature off easy for users to find?
Turning reservations on/off

Testing the full experience

After gaining small bits of feedback from users I wanted to test the experience as a whole. I created a prototype of the full experience then created some task scenarios for the test.

Prototype — Reserving scooter within 0.5 miles
Prototype — Turning off feature

My Successes

After working on this case study I sent my work over to a senior designer at Lime and this is the reply I received:

Senior designer at Lime responds to my case study
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