WeRide - student carpool App
Navigating the daily commute to UCSD poses a daunting challenge for a multitude of off-campus students. Hindered by factors like extended travel distances, skyrocketing parking fees, elusive parking spaces, and steep rideshare prices, these students are in desperate need of a better solution.
WeRide, an innovative carpool app, is designed to revolutionize the way UCSD students travel to campus. By matching drivers and riders who share the same destination, WeRide offers a cost-effective, secure, and hassle-free commuting alternative. Drivers benefit from the app's reimbursement system, which covers fuel costs and other minor expenses. Meanwhile, riders can peruse short profiles of fellow student drivers and
Problems
“Worst part about using MTS is I have to plan my day around departure times”
~UCSD Student
“I try to get to campus 1-2 hours before my first lecture so I have a chance at finding parking”
~UCSD Student
Across public schools across the nation, commuters make up as much as 85% of the entire student population. However, given their massive numbers, the availability of commute options for most of these commuters is disappointing to say the least. A typical commuter may choose between a “long drive, longer parking hunt”, a 2 hour back and forth transit commute, or a very large payment to a rideshare service. Not only this, but several of these options are largely unsafe, presenting an unreasonably high risk of situations such as assault. As campuses expand and campus parking continues to become more and more cluttered, this problem both has and will only get worse.
Our Mission
Our mission at WeRide functions doubly as our offering: we seek to make commuting cheaper, safer, and more convenient. As off-campus commuters who understand the problem firsthand, we seek to ease the massive headache, both literal and metaphoric, that students like ourselves face when they must settle for getting to campus in a way which is unsafe, expensive, or highly inconvenient. WeRide focuses on providing an alternative that absolves students of these headaches, so that their effort school is spent learning - not finding a parking spot.
Real case scenarios - Why WeRide
Students who live off campus without owning a car generally have 2 options to transport from home to campus. bus/uber Because the maximum capacity of UCSD Campus housing has been reached, lots of students have to live off campus. But the commute usually requires a private owned car. The students who don't own cars have limited options to get to campus. Either of the options is time consuming and money consuming. Bus takes lots of time to wait at and forces students to follow a fixed schedule. It would take time for students to walk to bus stops and waste time waiting for the right line to come. The bus stops at each bus stop which is timing consuming. Uber is hard to call during peak time and a lot more expensive transportation options. Here is where WeRide comes in and fills the gap.
Case Need Observation:
Students who ride the bus to school have to walk to the closest bus stop wasting lots of time walking.
Students waste lots of time waiting for the buses to come to stops.
The bus schedule is fixed and cannot be personal and individual. There are around 50 people on bus at peak hour
The bus is crowded. There is no privacy at all.
Uber takes a long time to put down the driver for users at peak time.
Uber costs more than enough money that students could afford if they have to use uber for commute daily.
Case Need Observation:
Student needs to reduce the time. I wasted walking to the closest bus. stop from 20 min to 5 mins. with. our product
Student needs to reduce waiting time from 20 min to 5 min or less with our product.
Student needs a type of transportation that could be planned around their own schedule with our product.
Student needs privacy while ride the transportation. Reduce the number of people to less than 5 with our product.
User needs immediate driver response once they request the ride. Reduce 20 mins to 5 min with our product.
Users need to spend less money while commute with the ride. Reduce the cost from 20 dollars to 7 dollars with our product.
Introducing: WeRide
For the express purpose of absolving students of the commute pains listed above, we decided to build WeRide: an easy-to-use and pickup-optimized carpool app which presents students with a cheaper, safer, and more convenient alternative to their current commute options. The application groups drivers who are commuting to a campus/other location with riders who wish to go there as well, and if both students consent to the match the app will direct the driver to the home of the nearby commuter with real time GPS functionality. Upon the pickup, the rider will be charged a small fee, half of which will be used to compensate the driver. As the driver drives to campus, they can pick up multiple students, thus earning a relatively large compensation while easing the pains of several students commuting to campus.
Needfinding Analysis Table
Low Fidelity Design
High Fidelity Design
Final Product Design
Additional Concerns
In addition to being significantly cheaper and real-time-convenient, our application will also offer increased safety measures in comparison to rideshare services. All of our drivers will be background checked, and both riders and drivers may filter in advance with respect to the type of people they’d be comfortable getting into a car with: filters including gender, age, smoking status, etc. Beyond this, a rider and driver will not be forcibly matched - they’ll be within a set of suggestions, but both parties will be allowed to consent before getting into a car together - thus increasing customer control over their own safety.