Finding the best and cheapest car rental options can be a stressful task. Consumers often spend a significant amount of time searching different rental cars websites, comparing locations, prices, reading terms and conditions before making final reservation decisions. The goal of the new Airport Rentals app was to reduce users pain points doing all the hard work for them.

Although the web experience was delivering expected results, the mobile app has been neglected. The app was collecting bad reviews on the app stores with an outdated UI that wasn't aligned with current Material/iOS guidelines and a big amount of bugs that needed to be fixed.

Goal

The main goal was to to uplift the much dated Mobile app to a more modern, user-friendly and sophisticated design. The design direction was largely influenced by Google Material guidelines. I believe it is a visual language that synthesizes the classic principles of good design with the innovation of technology.

My role

I was the primary point person for our product design standards & guidelines, ensuring consistency, scalability, and modernity of elements and patterns. I was responsible to update and document our new style guide, determining the appropriate use of patterns, as well as, when to evolve them or leave them behind entirely.

The process in a UX team of one

As the only UX designer at Online Republic when this project started I knew that covering all the design process steps would be a challenging task.

I started my investigation doing a heuristic evaluation of the current app to identify key points of improvement. After summarizing the data I developed the following considerations:

• Users need a bunch of information before making their decision. The current interface was delivering a poor experience when trying to give users all the information they need
• Users had to face inconvenience because important features weren’t mentioned 
• It took longer to select a car of a specific preference because the filters didn't provide the flexibility needed
• Too many steps during the booking process
• The outdated design made the company look less reliable
  

I also wanted to discover what other companies were doing, so I started a competitor analysis to identify potential ideas to make the Airport Rentals app ready to fight at the same level of other big car hire companies.

Validating assumptions

As I didn't have all the resources to conduct live user testings I had to rely on the data available. I scheduled coffee sessions with stakeholders and coworkers to understand their view around customer expectations and pain points. Those sessions were also extremely valuable to get all the ins and outs of the business.

With all the information and data I could get my hands on I started experimenting and generating ideas quickly. That would help to have a basic view of how the screens would work in user interface form.

My next task was to create mid-fidelity wireframes and run a guerrilla test with people that wasn't involved in the business. I asked the participants to give qualitative and quantitative feedback on what their experience was when interacting with the prototype.

Designing the user interface

Takeaways

After several months of work I designed 120+ screens for iOS and Android. It was challenging and exciting to say the least.

I left the company before having the opportunity to see the product being delivered to customers. I still check the app reviews from time to time. Even though there are still some negative feedback, I find it extremely valuable to find out where I made mistakes and learn with them.

As a UX team of one, I can say that I'm proud of the final result. It was an amazing experience and I loved every step of it.