The background
iTaxi is a ride-hailing platform connecting passengers and licensed cab drivers – rather like Lyft, Uber, or Bolt. The company was formed in 2013, and our mobile app enables cab drivers to pick up passengers and charge them for the ride. The company focuses on offering a quality service to business customers across the largest cities in Poland, and in 2019 was recognized as one of the best developing tech companies in Europe by The Next Web’s Tech5 competition.
The task
To develop a user-friendly mobile app for cab drivers that will be usable, simple, and at the same time, will have a good impact on the business aspect.
Main responsibilities:
- UX of the mobile app
- UX research
- project management
- ownership of the whole product and KPIs.
The story behind the task
An old mobile app was so inefficient, that the managers at iTaxi decided that is should be replaced by the new one.
The reasons were:
- the maintaintenance of the application took too much time. To many developers’ hours were spent on fixing bugs rather than a development of some new features.
- the app was not scalable. If managers had an idea that would have a positive impact on the whole business, developing a new feature was almost impossible.
- iTaxi cab drivers were using the old (and outdated) mobile app for almost 5 years before the decision was made. They didn’t like it and they started to preferring other apps. Competitors apps.
The process
The process was a long one, but successful.
It included phases:
- Research of business needs at the same time as research of end-users’ needs. It was necessary to gather both of these to prepare requirements that would cover the needs of both sides. In addition to that, we did also research of the competitors around the world, to be sure, that we do not omit something important or that we do not do any mistake that someone did before us.
- UX – creating wireframes to visualize the requirements. Then test it with business and end-users. It was an iterative process: wireframes – research – fixes – research – until we found out the best version of wireframes. We tested wireframes both as single, static mockups and interactive prototypes.
- Design – when we were ready with wireframes, we asked a very good graphic designer to prepare a few versions of the design. We tested them with end-users to be sure they not only understand the structure of a new app (which we tested on phase 2.) but also colours and symbols.
- Development/ tests – it took almost 9 months to develop the whole app. We constantly tested new functionalities (manually at the office and at the city). We asked our end-users to participate in tests (60 of our cab drivers tested partially done app in real everyday work for about a month before we were sure that app is working well and we can release it to others cab drivers).
- After release – we discovered that not everything we have planned works so well that we imagined. So we started to fix the UX of the app using feedback from a user research we conducted with cab drivers. This is a cycle, so it won’t end.
The product is live now and is continuously improved.
Where to read more about the project?
- article in the Programmer magazine, 2019
- articles online: Polskie IT konkuruje z gigantami z Silicon Valley, czyli nowa aplikacja mobilna dla kierowców iTaxi [case study] and Poznaj kobiety, które stworzyły aplikację iTaxi dla kierowców
- a nomination to the Mobile Trends awards 2018 and a case study during the conference, Mobile Trends 2019
- a full description is also here, on the Teina’s website!
| Role | Owner |
|---|---|
| Client | iTaxi |
| Senior android developer | Anna Orłowska |
| Junior tester | Ewa Janik |
| IT director | Gaweł Boguta |
| Fleet manager | Małgorzata Jędryka |
| Senior java developer | Kamil Jagiełło |
| Product owner | Katarzyna Małecka |
| UX designer | Katarzyna Małecka |
| Senior android developer | Marcin Laskowski |
| Graphic designer | Marek Kaleta |
| Fleet director | Martyn Szczepankowski |
| IT architect | Piotr Rzeźniczak |
| Senior QA manager | Sylwia Okraska |