Rapido, India’s leading Bike Taxi platform, revolutionizes urban transportation with affordable, convenient rides for millions of users and over a million captains (drivers). With more than 50 million rides completed, Rapido's mission includes enhancing the livelihood of captains while improving customer satisfaction.
Survey analysis, jobs-to-be-done, wireframing, visual design, prototyping
Shashi Kumar | Project Lead
Priyank Ande | Product Manager
September 2021 - November 2021
Rapido faced a high drop-off rate among captains after their first few rides. This case study addresses the challenge of creating a feature to incentivize captains to remain engaged with the platform. The goal was to improve the user experience and increase retention, answering the question: How might we make earning bonuses engaging and accessible for Rapido captains?
To understand captains’ pain points and motivations, I reviewed data provided by Rapido’s dev team and examined survey responses from captains.
These findings indicated that captains valued transparent incentives, ease of use, and trustworthy support. This guided us to prioritize motivational elements, clear rewards, and a sense of progression within the app.
I worked closely with the team to define user goals and identify 'jobs-to-be-done' to help us structure an incentives feature that would resonate with captains and increase engagement.
Motivate to complete more rides by introducing attainable bonuses.
Increase captain retention by creating a clear, enjoyable earning journey.
Make incentives a central retention strategy to drive ongoing captain loyalty.
As a captain,
When I complete a ride,
I want to earn ride tips,
So I can fund my college fees.
From here, I compiled a list of user jobs across personas, which informed the feature’s development and design approach.
With Rapido’s constraints on altering core architecture, I needed to strategically position the “Incentives” feature to be easily accessible without disrupting the app’s established flow. I placed “Incentives” within the hamburger menu, aiming for a centralized entry point that could scale. However, I observed that this placement limited visibility due to the following issues:
To improve discoverability, I added a red “NEW” badge to the menu icon and tested a post-ride trigger flow that prompted users to explore incentives after completing a ride.
I started with a framework where I added a way to view the total earned bonus along with all the different types of bonus that users can earn. Users can also share their earned incentive journey. I used the concept of the Goal gradient effect to motivate users as they get closer to the goal.
To foster trust, I focused on designing a transparent incentives structure that gave captains a clear view of their total earned bonuses and the various bonus types they could unlock. In addition, I applied the Goal Gradient Effect, a motivational concept that makes users more likely to complete tasks as they approach a milestone. This feature allowed captains to track their progress visually and motivated them to stay engaged with the app.
The final layout emphasized simplicity and clarity, presenting incentives as an ethical and transparent framework. Captains could easily view their total bonuses, monitor progress, and share achievements. This gave them a sense of control and transparency over their earnings journey, reinforcing trust.
To maintain visual consistency, I created a style guide based on Rapido’s existing design system. This included colors, typography, and layout elements to ensure uniformity across the app.
