Booking.com / Rideways
Supplier Partner Portal web app & Customer Website
UX Designer | 2018
During my time at Booking.com, working in the Rental Cars Booking Go offices in Manchester, I led the design across multiple projects simultaneously. My primary responsibility was the redesign of the Rental Cars taxi rides booking system. This large-scale initiative focused on creating a new look and feel for the web portal, including mapping and designing end-to-end user journeys and delivering a seamless user experience. The work involved producing detailed style guides and pattern libraries for development teams, building rapid prototypes, and conducting user testing to validate and refine the solution.
Skills Employed: UX Design, UI Design, Prototyping, User testing Interviews, Remote Testing, HTML, CSS, Email Design, Style Guides.
Tools Used: Sketch, Axure, Zeplin, Invision, User Zoom, Google Analytics
Identifying the problem
Research & Insight Gathering
Rental Cars/Rideways had recently been acquired by Booking.com when I was brought onto the project. Their taxi booking web application required a comprehensive UX and visual refresh. The redesign spanned the entire ecosystem, including the supplier side (taxi partner companies), the drivers’ ride management app, and the customer-facing rider experience.
The scope also included the introduction of new features such as live journey tracking and real-time driver reporting. The existing UX/UI was outdated and not user-centred, making the system difficult for booking offices to use. These usability issues negatively impacted their operations, leading to missed rides and disputes with Rental Cars. Overall, the product delivered a poor experience for both suppliers and customers.
Design Process & Solutions
Ideation, Design & Prototyping
I began the project by conducting early user interviews in various locations around Manchester with the general public. The purpose of this was to gain valuable insight into how people booked, communicated with taxi firms and their experience of pre-booked taxi journeys. Stakeholders and I began with a series of kick-off project workshops of discovery to sketch and wireframe early ideas and prototype core user journeys for the supplier portal. These ideas were tested with users and feedback helped the next steps in design iteration. Meanwhile I was also creating a new design system for the application using a material design style aligned to the Rideways Brand.
The Outcome
Results
The release of the Supplier Partner Portal led to a significant reduction in cancelled and missed ride bookings within the first six weeks. After three months—and following an additional release that addressed key bug fixes—cancelled and missed bookings had decreased by more than half compared to previous levels. The portal proved successful in reducing driver no-shows, improving driver tracking and communication, increasing driver satisfaction, and enhancing the overall customer experience.
My Design Process
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Every project begins with understanding and research. Identifying and understanding the problems of a product or an idea and how something works is at the base of every project I tackle.
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After the understanding of the problem has been thoroughly researched and understood I then begin to ideate through, sketching, holding workshops, creating mockup designs and prototyping journeys and flows .
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Testing designs and user experiences with human beings is the next step in the process, and the way of validating ideas explored in the previous process of sketching and designing potential solutions. The insights gathered from user testing is assessed and the learnings then help to evolve the design and thinking.
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After testing and iterating, testing again if necessary it’s then time to start refining and finalising designs into a finished product ready to be built by development teams. Project depending, development can also be part of the test process for A/B test and other forms of validating designs in a live environment. Final designs will be thouroughly tested again for QA to ensure design and behavious are correctly implemented.