Tell me more ×
User Experience Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for user experience researchers and experts. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 1 down vote favorite

Currently working on a taxi app and need to organise the vehicles into categories. The user will need to be able to quickly select their desired vehicle while showing passengers & luggage for each vehicle.

The categories:

  • Standard (Saloon, Estate, Standard MPV, Large MPV)
  • Premium (Multiple vehicle types)
  • Executive (Multiple vehicle types)

Any thoughts on how I could clearly show all the vehicles - maybe a carousel? slider?. Keep in mind that a lot of people don't know what the differences are between Saloon, Estate etc.

share|improve this question
1  
Drawing grey scale profile pics of each of the car types should convey enough information to allow most users to distinguish the car types. When you say Multiple Vehicle types do you mean the four types mentioned in brackets after Standard? – Lisa Tweedie Jun 12 '12 at 23:32
Why do you give the user choice over the vehicle type, rather than just have them specify the number of people that will be travelling and then determine the best car type based on that instead? That way if there is only 1 person travelling but you only have large MPV available at that time you can still allocate that car to the customer. Yes, let them choose Std, Premium and Executive but I'm not sure allowing them to pick a vehicle type makes the most business sense. – JonW♦ Jun 13 '12 at 7:47

2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

Since 99% of your users will simply pick their route and go, your choice for changing the vehicle should be broken out to a separate screen (perhaps using Ajax so a full refresh is not required).

Quote the price, and have 'Standard' listed with a nice visible [Upgrade] button next to it. Clicking that button takes them to a separate screen dedicated to upselling them on a fancier ride. On that screen you can have a set of cards for the different choices (silhouettes as suggested by @LisaTweedie are a good method), but rather than a scrollable list you can lay them all out since your entire interface is temporarily devoted to this choice. Extra room means fewer constraints and its much easier to make it look good and be easy to choose.

Since you were already at the quote screen, you can provide the exact price and pickup times for each choice (no guessing, no approximations) because you already have the customer's route selected.

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

I would look to simplicity first:

While you have many types of vehicles, your bullets indicate three distinct purchasing levels: Standard, Premium, and Executive.

I would first offer these choices as large avenues of discourse. Since this choice most affects price and other considerations (if I'm understanding correctly) it'll be the highest priority on the customer's mind. After this choice, I would clear away the other two choices that weren't selected and slide in the sub choices of each. I would continue the slider motif by presenting the smallest vehicle on the left, moving up to the largest; pictogram style.

share|improve this answer
Current Flow for booking a taxi: 1. Pick Up Address 2. Drop Off Address 3. Quote Screen (Price, Vehicle (default - Standard), Additional Comments. Most users will not need to adjust the vehicle type but if they do want to I need to accomodate for them. – Anthony Jun 12 '12 at 23:36

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.