Uber trails Lyft in updating driver app functions
Uber has redesigned its Partner app to give its drivers more information on how to make more money and provide a better experience for their passengers. The update, which was unveiled yesterday, includes a "heat map" that shows drivers where they are most likely to get their next customer. It is worth noting that many of these features, whilst new to Uber, have long been offered to drivers aligned to Uber’s US-rival, Lyft.

Uber’s founders didn’t invent Uber for drivers. They invented it for themselves, a couple of guys in San Francisco who wanted to be ballers by summoning limos from their phones. Then they invented it for ballers like themselves—upscale urbanites, mostly. Then they invented it for anyone who wanted to get anywhere by “pool” or “x” or “SUV” or “helicopter,” even if they didn’t care about being baller. Push a button, get a car. On the other end of that button there have always been drivers, picking up rides from an app that has looked and functioned pretty much the same since the company launched. And for drivers, the Uber app was decidedly un-baller.

That changes today, as the company rolls out its first redesigned app for its partners. It’s the culmination of a massive, yearlong design process to which nearly 100 Uber employees contributed. The new app will transform Uber’s driver software into a management platform offering tools to help its drivers tend and grow their businesses. “We’ve had this fragmented communication with drivers over email and we just didn’t have information available for them,” says Jeff Holden, the longtime Amazon executive who joined Uber last year as head of product. “We wanted to completely re-invent the driver app.”

The new app reflects how the company’s take on design has evolved in the six years since it was founded. From the start, Uber’s simplicity was its selling point. And that approach was easy to maintain when the product was new and the team was small. “There’s this core principal of seamless design, there was that magic associated with pushing a button and getting a car,” says Nundu Janakiram, who, as Uber’s Head of Core Experience, first championed the redesign. “How can you apply that same magic to more things? That’s the Uber design philosophy we try to pull through all the products that we build.”

Maintaining a commitment to simplicity in an increasingly complex environment is the ultimate design challenge. Uber’s partner app is a case study in how the company approaches that challenge.

Uber, however, is getting more complex. Consider that, six years in, Uber has more than 4,500 employees in 61 countries. It’s worth more than $50-billion. In addition to moving people around, it’s taking a stab at moving packages, couches, and pizzas—among other things. It has a team in Pittsburgh, PA building self-driving cars and it's working on its own mapping software. And unlike Facebook, Google, and other large software companies operating out of the Bay Area, Uber runs a local logistics business. In light of this, maintaining a commitment to simplicity in an increasingly complex environment becomes the ultimate design challenge. Uber’s partner app offers a case study in how the company approaches it: “Finding that core nugget of magic amid the complexity is how our design philosophy is evolving,” says Janakiram.

The redesign began just more than a year ago, shortly after Janakiram came over to Uber from Google, where he’d spent several years working on Search and YouTube. As his title suggests, he was in charge of every experience integral to Uber’s core product, from rider safety to ratings to Uber Pool. One of the first things Janakiram did in his new role was check in with folks working on everything from design research to on-the-ground operations. What he heard back indicated Uber could do a much better job providing useful information to its drivers. The app at that time, for example, provided heat maps to show drivers where they were most likely to get rides, but only when surge pricing was in effect and demand was strong. This was great for passengers, who wanted the rides. But it didn’t help drivers figure out how to optimize their business during the doldrums, when demand was normal or low.

In January, the redesign team convened its first meeting in what came to be known as the “war room,” a conference room with whiteboard walls large enough that dozens of designers and engineers could congregate in it at one time. In addition to the usual suspects, Uber added a new appointment to the mix: "Product operations specialists" are employees who start their careers in local city offices and transfer to headquarters; they’re critical to helping Uber understand the challenges of rolling out the service in individual markets.

Janakiram convened a team of people whose job it was to review copious amounts of research pouring in from around the globe. They’d sit in on focus groups and attend driver-led meetups to get a broader sense of what drivers wanted from the app. And, of course, they’d interview local drivers whenever they got in a car. They discovered some drivers kept a pen and pad next to their smartphones to record their incomes. Others complained they had to log on to a computer when they wanted to complete administrative tasks like updating their car insurance information.