Carriage Case Study

Carriage is a web and mobile platform designed to improve the user experience of scheduling, completing, and monitoring CULift rides for administrators, riders, and drivers. CULift is the shuttle service used by students with temporary and permanent mobility disabilities at Cornell.

Team

Cornell Design and Tech Initiative

Skills

Visual Design, Interaction Design

Tools

Figma

Timeline

March 2021 - May 2021

Problem

Administrators want to save time and experience less stress at work, but they can’t because they:

  1. Waste time scheduling every recurring ride

  2. Can’t schedule rides in advance

Adding Repeating Rides

Solution

1. Custom repeating rides

Instead of taking time to schedule a recurring ride every time it occurs, administrators can save time and schedule it once.

2. Date Input

Before, administrators only had the option to schedule a ride the day of. A date input gives them the flexibility to schedule rides far in advance. This reduces their stress because they don’t need to schedule rides at the last minute.

Explorations

I explored different interactions for the user to take when customizing their repeating rides. On the other hand, option 2 has a dropdown that opens above the other fields.

Pros:

  • Avoids using a dropdown within a modal

  • No custom end date reduces clutter and might be unnecessary because most repeating rides stop at the end of the semester

Cons:

  • The user might think the expansion panel is hiding other fields, could be mistaken for a dropdown

Pros:

  • Includes end date for recurring events that stop before the semester ends (e.g. clubs)

  • Requires no extra work for most users because, by default, repeating rides stop at the end of the semester

Cons:

  • Dropdown within modal looks cluttered

Final Prototype

This video shows a demonstration of the user scheduling a custom repeating ride.

Problem

Administrators need to quickly find individual students' profiles in order to more efficiently perform their core responsibilities and save time for other tasks.

Filtering Students by Status

 

These responsibilities are…

1. Monitoring and following up with students with repeat tardiness or no-shows

2. Deactivating and activating students as needed

3. Using student data as well as ride data to determine how well service is performing

4. Identifying students that need special accommodations

Original Design

Currently, the administrator wastes time scrolling through all active and inactive students to find the student they are looking for.

To solve this, the product managers on my team assigned me the task of designing a feature to filter students by active and inactive.

 Option A: Checkbox

Pros:

  • Shows that seeing inactive students is low priority

  • Shows active students by default

Cons: 

  • If active students fill page, user must scroll for inactive students at bottom

 Option B: Tab Navigation

Pros:

  • Shows active students by default

  • Don’t have to worry about scrolling to see inactive students

Cons: 

  • Implies that user often checks inactive students

Final solution: Checkbox with inactive students at top

Why:

  • No need to scroll to see inactive students

  • Checkbox shows this feature is low priority

  • Since users only want to activate a specific student, they don’t need to see active and inactive students at once

  • User can easily hide inactive students again after they are done activating a student