Rent a drone
Personal Design Challenge • 3 days
Challenge
Design a comprehensive drone rental platform that caters to the needs of renters, owners, and platform operators.
How might we design a drone renting experience so that amateur drone flyers are encouraged to rent a drone to practice flying?
Problem statement
Unpacking the brief
Understanding the context
Desk research
Research questions:
Why do people want to rent a drone?
How do they decide what drone to rent?
What kind of drones are popular in a rental market?
What are renters’ / owners’ concerns?
What are the policies & regulations surround drone operation? How does it affect the renting experience?
Understanding the context
Drone rentals are typically for recreation and entertainment
Therefore, consumer drones that are friendly to amateurs e.g. Multi rotor drones are most popular in the rental market.
Gaining popularity among youths as hobby
Drone renting services are mostly occupied by amateurs to gain proficiency in flying.
Small businesses may rent drones to eliminate high upfront costs
They may also engage a skilled pilot to help with operating the drone. This is less common in a peer to peer rental market.
Understanding users
Renter
Owner
Platform owner
Reframing the problem statement
How might we design a drone renting experience so that amateur drone flyers are encouraged to rent a drone to practice flying?
The renter's journey
Design
Design principles
Facilitate decision making as much as possible
Majority are hobbyists who are not heavily invested in the hobby. They may not have a clear idea of the type of drone to rent. Equipping them with tools and relevant data can help nudge them to take action.
Give clarity surrounding costs
As renters are often price sensitive, information surrounding price should be displayed clearly.
Consider their main motivation for renting
Main motivations are to try out certain models of drone and to practice flying.
Explorations of key screens
Exploration
Before delving into screen wireframes, I prioritized key screens by focusing on the happy flow of the problem statement - How might we design a drone renting experience so that amateur drone flyers are encouraged to rent a drone to practice flying?
With a combination of desk research and logical assumptions, I identified the main Jobs to be Done (JTBD) and related JTBD (e.g.
Discover homepage
Main JTBD:
• As a beginner drone flyer, I want to discover available drone to rent
Related JTBD:
• I want to filter drones that are available for rent during my intended rental period
• I want to narrow down the drones for beginners and drones for professionals) to ensure alignment with users' key goals.
With this clarity, designing became intuitive, and I explored various layouts for information and content through simple wireframes.
Final Design
Discover homepage
Search bar
Placeholder text informs users that they may enter the rental period to search for available drones to rent
Quick filters
Quick filters to help different profiles quickly find relevant drones.
Only showing what’s most important
Name and cost is the most relevant information to user in the beginning
Global nav
Key pages that users are likely to frequent the most
Colour
Sleek, dark theme as default to cater to a younger, predominantly male customer base
The Discover page's is designed to aid users in narrowing down listings, thereby enhancing decision-making processes.
Booking flow
Key characteristics of the listing to facilitate impression forming and reduce mental load on users. More information given on the refundable deposit to give assurance to drone renters.
Compare listing
Users can compare listings side by side upon tapping this compare icon button
Mandatory fields for owners to list
These fields should be comprehensive enough so that renters are effectively make decisions without have to engage in back & forth communication with owners
Quick link to review portion
Users can quickly jump to the reviews portion by tapping on “10 reviews”
My rentals page
Easy recall of upcoming rentals, displaying the most important information at this point of time - rental period.
Review
Upon completing a rental, user will be prompted to offer a review
Upcoming rentals
Most important info is the rental period so that users do not forget to collect their drones
Compare drones
Equipping users with tools such as easy comparisons will facilitate their decision making process
Review
My assumption is that the most important details for comparison especially for beginners are:
Owner’s service
Costs
Ratings & reviews
Condition of the drone
Compare listing
Users can compare listings side by side upon tapping this icon button
Payment page
To facilitate payment process with summary page for users to check through the details before confirming payment.
Reminder notification
Reminder is automatically set for renters so that can collect the drones promptly
Review & Feedback
To encourage users to offer their feedback and review, a dismissable prompt is shown after a rental has closed.
Ratings and feedback is key to the decision making process and updated feedback helps to promote the sense of a thriving community.
Feedback
If user dismisses the prompt, they will be able to see it in the rentals page.