Even with many mobility apps already in the market, designing a new one from scratch is far from easy. In this case study, I’ll walk you through the journey of understanding user needs, navigating growth challenges, making key design and product decisions, and ultimately designing for scale.

About

Namma Yatri is the first open-network mobility application built to provide multi-modal service to commuters without middlemen involvement (Zero Commission Model). Founded on principles of transparency and consumer-centricity, it launched auto rickshaw services—the first of many planned offerings—to the public in October 2022.

Challenges of Rapid Growth

As the Namma Yatri app grew from just 100 to over 1 lakh rides per day, our driver base expanded exponentially. However, our driver partner app designs hadn't evolved beyond the insights of our earliest users.

With more drivers onboard, we began receiving increased feedback about :-

• Difficulty in choosing between multiple rides within a limited timeframe. This often led drivers to accept rides without fully reviewing the details.
• This led to an increase in post-acceptance ride cancellations and a rise in drivers contacting customers before starting the ride to clarify details.

Listening to Our Driver Partners

To better understand the problem space, we conducted in-person interviews, usability tests and focus group discussions with our driver partners, supported by our CX team.

Since many of our drivers were native kannada speakers, we believed they would best express their challenges in their own language.Our CX team played a crucial role in communicating our research and usability questions to the drivers in their native language. The following insights emerged from our research.

Setting Our Goals

After reviewing our insights, we defined the following goals to guide our approach:

1. Reduce the time needed to review ride information;
2. Provide a faster and efficient way to choose between multiple rides;
3. Improve transparency by displaying essential ride details after acceptance;
4. Track reductions in driver calls to customers between ride acceptance and arrival.