OVERLANDER
Designing a peer-to-peer off road vehicle sharing app for renters and owners to share the adventure
Overview
During a visit to my mechanic, I noticed a abnormally large amount of off-roading vehicles he had parked in his businesses lot. I later find out that on the side, he rents his ATVs through platforms like Facebook Marketplace, and OfferUp. He mentions that it had been a profitable business model but that he ran into problems having to manually manage everything on his own.
Team
Role
Product Designer
Tools
Figma, Maze, Zoom, Google Workspace, Notion, Slack
Time
October to December 2023
Context
There is a high demand for people interested in off-roading with a lack of equipment and vehicles they have at their disposal. Currently, no other car sharing platforms allow for off-road rentals. Off-road owners also are not always using their vehicles, leaving them sitting for prolonged periods of time without use.
Problem
My mechanic (Chris) ran into issues with managing his listings across multiple platforms, tracking payment and renters' info, and maintaining his bookings. This created a difficult system for him to up keep. Impacting his efficiency as a host and the overall experience of renters seeking for off-road vehicles.
How we solved it
A vehicle sharing mobile app for off-roading vehicles, where off-road owners can rent their vehicles to users looking to book them for certain dates. Focusing on 3 main feature flows including:
'Guests' searching and placing a reservation on a vehicle
A host confirming a renter's reservation
A host creating a new listing for a vehicle
Research
Are there existing apps that allow off-road vehicle sharing?
I started by defining some research objectives and goals to determine what research methods would best fit what I wanted to uncover.
Research similar existing car sharing platforms and identify how they work for both owners and renters
Understand how a vehicle owner would rent out their vehicles
Identify the challenges owners face throughout the rental process
Identify renters motivations, pain points, and goals with renting a vehicle
Within the car sharing market, the most notable companies in the US like Turo and Getaround have been operating since the 2010s focusing mainly on mid-sized sedan cars, but lacks any options for off-roading vehicles.
The closest thing to off-road vehicle sharing I was able to find was a site called GetMyBoat, which focused on boat and other aquatic vehicle rentals.
Due to a lack of research participants, I was limited to conducting 3 user interviews, and gathered more of my insights via surveys.
My mechanic was my only interviewee with experience renting out his vehicles to others so it was crucial having his insight on what his process is for renting a vehicle out. And when comparing it to what digital solutions were available for normal car sharing, the process was quite similar. His main concerns were more about payment processing and communicating safety issues and rules to renters to keep both them and his vehicles safe.
Both vehicle owners and renters primary concern was communication between one another
- Interviewee on past experience with rental apps
Here were some of the common themes I found after gathering all of my insights:
Facilitate a smooth reservation process for guests and provide effective channels of communication between both parties
I grouped similar findings from my interviews into the two key players of 'The Renter' and 'Cautious Owner'.
While both groups have slightly different goals, the common themes come from the hand-over of the vehicle(s) between one another. So, focusing in on facilitating a smooth process for both parties would be the key goal when creating the flows to display in the MVP.
Ensure that The Renter has open communication with the owner and that the Cautious Owner can respond to urgent inquiries
Once I had the problem narrowed down, I started ideating any features I could think of related to and adjacent to how I could remedy both audiences pain points.
From the list of features I had, and using the MoSCoW method for prioritization, I ranked the features to consolidate it into necessary features to execute on for the MVP.
Based off of the must-have features, the user flows I wanted to show in my prototype would be:
Renter places reservation for a vehicle and messages host about a question
Host confirms reservation and responds to renters question