Carropool - Search and Join
Carropool is a mobile app designed to help parents easily find, join, and create carpools for school drop-offs and pick-ups to help them save time while supporting their kids.
Role
Product designer
Strategy
Researcher
Timeline
Jun 2024 - Feb 2025
Tools
Figma
OPPORTUNITIES
For my Google UX certificate project, I tackled the challenge of helping parents coordinate carpooling—a common issue in my community. Many families struggle without reliable transportation, so I set out to design a solution that could save time and improve access to activities for kids.
MY ROLE
This was a self-started project where I really drove the end to end design. I talked to parents and founders of existing kids’ ridesharing apps to understand the current landscape. I brainstormed ideas, tested them with real users, and iterated to arrive at a design that could make transportation safer and easier for families.
Explore Final Design
RESEARCH - SECONDARY RESEARCH
52% of parents with kids under 18 find the pick up/drop off processes frustrating.
Despite frustrations from traffic, waiting in lines, bad drivers, more than 40% of parents still choose driving as the mode of transporation. The survey also showed 65% of parents say they worry about their children’s safety when it comes to commuting.
61% of parents were annoyed by congestion
44% by time away from other tasks
44% by distracted drivers
RESEARCH - USER INTERVIEWS
So I asked, what are the experiences of parents with pick up/drop off, do they carpool, and what challenges do they commonly face?
I interviewed 10 parents about their current pick up/drop off routine. The interview validated that most kids are still getting to school/after-school activities by car. Working parents say pick up/drop off does impact their work schedules and can be time-consuming.
RESEARCH - USER PAIN POINTS
Only 1/10 parents I talked to were carpooling their kids. Two top concerns emerged through my conversations with parents:
Difficulty searching
Parents find it hard to get information - takes a lot of effort to ask around for potential carpool partners, sometimes not available in immediate friend circle.
Safety
Safety and trust concerns - not knowing the other parties involved is scary. Plus, kids may not like strangers.
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS - USER PERSONAS
Understanding Our Users: Two Different Parenting Realities
From interview insights, I generated two parent personas that the APP could help with:
Background
Emily is a Marketing Manager with a demanding full-time job. She lives with her husband, who also works full time, and her two children.
Frustrations
Work-Life Balance: Struggles to balance a demanding job with childcare, often impacting her career.
Inconsistent Help: Family and friends aren’t always available for pick-ups.
Safety Concerns: Hesitant to trust strangers with her children's safety.
Goals
Save Time: Avoid leaving work early for pick-ups.
Ensure Safety: Find a trustworthy, safe carpooling solution.
Ease of Use: Use convenient, reliable solutions that fit her routine.
“I would need to be more than 100% certain that it’s safe and trustworthy.”
Background
Maria is a single mother, 38, working long hours as a waitress to support her two children. She lives in a low-income neighborhood, and doesn’t speak English very well. She’s not very involved with her kids’ school activities due to lack of time and resources.
Frustrations
Limited Support: Lack of reliable access to transportation or social network to find help.
Time Constraints: Long work hours leave little time to be involved in her children's academics, her children are not able to participate in extracurricular activities.
Technology/Language Barriers
Goals
Simple Solutions: Find an easy-to-use, tech-friendly carpooling option.
Increased Involvement: Ensure her children can participate in extracurricular activities.
Safety and Communication: Use a trustworthy carpooling service with clear communication about her children’s transportation.
“I can’t always be there for them, but I’m always trying to give them the best.”
RESEARCH - COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Market gap: help parents find public carpools
Currently, there are two types of mobile apps on the market that help parents with carpooling.
Organize carpool groups with people you know
Do not offer search and join features.
Safe - only carpool with people you invite.
Search and join within a school
Limits search to single school search instead of area-wide.
Safe-ish - parents use school code to log in/verify identity.
Search and join anywhere
Area wide search, for any school or event.
Safe - carpool with people you know or with parents in your community with safety measures.
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS - DESIGN SCOPE
Define the Search and Join Experience
Current apps offer limited functionality with searching and joining public carpool groups, leaving a gap for a more impactful solution to help parents search for potential partners. This project will focus on the pre-ride experience—specifically how parents can sign up, search and join carpool groups.
Before the ride
Login/sign up
Verify information
Coordinate
Search for carpool
Request to join
Confirm carpool
Arrive at pick up
Drop off
Confirm riders
Rate and review
Confirm drop off
Report a problem
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
Research shows that many parents are frustrated with school pick-up/drop-off due to congestion and career impacts, yet over 40% still drive their kids. Carpooling is a potential solution, but parents worry about safety, finding reliable partners, and kids’ comfort with unfamiliar carpoolers.
IDEATE
Design Principles
Based on research insights, I developed three design principles to guide the direction of the search and join features, as designing for parents and children can be highly sensitive
Security
Provide multiple barriers to ensure safety and prevent abuse.
Connectivity+ Familiarity
Encourage discovery and connection through existing network
Simplicity
Reduce friction and help parents get to next steps quickly and simply.
IDEATE - OUR NETWORK
Carpool with Friends, or Friend of a Friend
#security
#connectivity
#familiarity
#community
People rely on and trust one another when it comes to sharing information. By leveraging existing networks and common interests, we can help connect parents and foster greater trust.
Public ratings and rides records can also help make drivers accountable, and help create a safer space.
IDEATE - KEEP IT SAFE
Identification Verification
#security
I explored two methods for parents to verify their identity to promote a safer community. After first round of usability testing, 3/5 parents preferred to have a more stringent background check system.
Option 1: Verify with school code
Parents don’t have to give up personal information
Process is simple and easy IF you know the school code or where to find it
Less safe - parents are not background checked
Operational challenge - need to partner with many schools
Option 2: Comprehensive check
Safer and a peace of mind
Parents have to provide a lot of information
More likely to cause drop off
IDEATE - FLOW
How might we ensure security while minimizing friction?
#security
#simplicity
The primary challenge was finding the right balance between ensuring security and maintaining a simple, intuitive process. By delaying the verification step until after displaying the results, we provide users with the most value before they are asked to share personal information, reducing the chance of early drop-off.
On-boarding
Account creation
Personalization
Identity verification
Search and Join
Search parameters
View search results
Review details
Request to join
Identity verification
HI-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Sign up
Users first handshake with the APP - the design introduces the platform and key new features. It’s a play of balancing security measures with simplicity via storytelling. The experience aims to gain trust, to show value ASAP, and to make the process frictionless by providing just the right amount of personalization to send the parents on their way to finding their first carpools.
HI-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Search and verify
Building on the personalized onboarding, users can quickly search for carpools and view trusted results from their own network. To access and join public carpools, verification is required to ensure safety and prevent misuse of the platform.
HI-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Search and join
After verification, users can access public carpools. Profiles include key details such as an about section, verified information, preferences, and reviews to build trust. A short questionnaire also helps carpool owners screen and filter join requestsuests.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
About safety
Safety is one of the hardest things to address for this APP due to the unpredictable nature of human behavior. It becomes critical for designers to provide support and guidance to users through specific preventative measures.
At Uber, data analysts conducted studies that showed what time and where assaults were most likely to occur for a ride. This data-driven research helps to inform decisions that can create a safer and more transparent environment for adults and further highlights the importance of prevention measures for child focused mobility. When the right opportunity arises, I would explore more real-time safety features and collaborate with schools or child-safety organizations to research and validate solutions.
Value to Business
With the understanding that we can't provide services to help parents without staying afloat, I thought about a couple of revenue models that align with the product's purpose and user experience:
Freemium - basic features are free. However, parents who need advanced features - such as managing multiple carpools, setting custom schedules with linked calendars, etc. - would upgrade to a subscription plan.
Advertising - for local community events and family-oriented businesses curated for our parents/kids. Having contextual ads is another way to strengthen the community and reinforce value add to parents.
REACH OUT
2025 Yuxin Ren