About the project

Charrio is a platform for families to find vetted sitters for children' school transportations. Sitters have been through meticulous background checks and are connected to parents who are seeking for reliable, trust-worthy temporary sitters to drive or walk their kids from home to school. The algorithm enables the famliy to carpool or share with other families so that they can enjoy convenient services at an affordable price. The beta versions of Charrio Parent App and Sitter App are currently under development and are expected to be released on App store on December, 2017.



Project Info

Time
Jun, 2017 - Present
Location
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania


Duties

Role
Lead UX Designer
Responsibilities
Leading the UX design, conducting user research, prototyping and generating design documents


Tools

Sketch, Invision, Zeplin


Problem Statement

Background

The average babysitter hourly wage is about $14 and most sitters have a 2-4 hour minimum pay per job. Therefore, most families in the US can’t afford part-time sitters to pick up their kids after school.

At the same time, even for the families that can afford sitters, they may not need the sitters to be so involved, which contradicts with sitters' expectations for longer working hours and higher payment. Therefore, finding the ideal sitters becomes a headache for these families and usually costs extra effort.

Outcomes

Lack of transportation options for families can lead to:

Solution

Charrio is a platform for families to find vetted sitters to drive or walk their kids to school. On Charrio Parent App, parents can build a pool of their trusted sitters. Everytime they schedule trips, the system will send requests to their favourite sitters first. Parents can edit and manage their requests during the matching process. Meanwhile, sitters can browse and accept requests on Charrio Sitter App. When the matches are made and trips take place, parents can track the status of the trips and be assured that their kids are being well taken care of.

Features

Charrio is tactically differenciated and positioned on the market. It captures parents' pain points of their needs for safety, affordability and flexibility. Compared with care.com, it's more focused and targeted on children's transportation. It provides more flexibility in finding and changing sitters. Compared with other school kid transportation providers, Charrio offers thourough and extensive background checks. Charrio not only provides an option of driving but also walking, which is omitted by all the competitors.



Research

Persona

Dreams

  • Ongoing quest for convenience and easier service
  • Developing a good rapport with a favored Nanny

Interest

  • Maintaining a schedule
  • Tracking the whereabouts of the child(-ren)

Concern

  • Communicativeness of driver
  • Child’s behaviour on route
  • Child’s health on route

Relationship with technology

  • While comfort with mobile app is ideal, the app has to be easy and intuitive
  • May not be mobile app savvy

Competitor Study

Compared with the competitors, Charrio provides a more smooth and natural flow to use. We not only consider the functional aspect of the process, but also psychological.

Competitor

“Wait Time” adds too much uncertainty. It’s hard to coordinate with parent’s schedule. Parent may use trial and error method to get the ideal dropoff time.

The accumulated amount of wait time over a period is astonishing, not to mention the mental exhaustion after waiting for long time.


Charrio

Instead of asking for pickup/dropoff times and wait times, we ask for the latest pick/dropoff time. Therefore, parent can better plan out their schedule.

It’s more accurate, reduces the amount of inputs and gets rid of any further concern the parent may have.






Diagram of competitor's pickup and dropoff process:




Diagram of Charrio's pickup and dropoff process:



Competitor

This flow asks for parent’s decision too early.

Parents would like to make the choice between carpool and single ride with an idea of the price in their mind.





Charrio

Instead, we provide all qualified options for parents to choose from. They can compare the prices and make decisions with ease.

This saves them from the potential effort of going back and forth to choose their ideal rides.

User Experience Design

I led the UX design of both Charrio Parent App and Charrio Sitter App. I worked closely with the founder, Frantz Framie, an MBA candidate from the Wharton School on either business side and UX design side. With a full understanding of business positioning and user mentalities, I collaborated with other designers and developers in our team. Our goal is to create a neat process with concise information display and a friendly interface for even the tech laggers. After 4 months of discussions and iterations, both apps have come to the stage of backend development.


information architecture


Process map


Wireframes


A booking process

Here's a showcase of the process of booking a trip.

User test

We prototyped it on iOS devices and had them tested with tens of people and in our focus groups. Parents and sitters were interviewed and asked for their opinions on Charrio Apps by means of questionnaires, observation and open-ended questions. Minor iterations are still going on and Charrio is still perfecting herself.

Takes aways

Think big, dive into small

Take a look at the problem from the highest level (business positioning, logistics). Keep in mind the large picture. Ponder on the details, conjecture and test on people’s response. You would have to go back and forth between these mentalities.


The importance of iterations

Sometimes you cannot predict what people will actually do. To tackle a complex real-life task like a carpool transportation service for kids, the best way is to do numerous tests and iterations.


Beware of not causing small frustrations

The accumulative effect of small frustrations is tremendous. Be aware not to cause another problem when solving one.


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