Beryl: A New Era of Student Mobility

Overview

This UX case study displays how I helped the team at Beryl design a mockup to specifically appease to student mobility.

Role: I was a UX Design intern at Beryl as they were looking to update their app since their release in late 2020. I worked in a team consisting of 2 Product Designers, 1 Senior Product Designer, Product Manager and 2 app developers.

Timeline: September 2023 — November 2023 (8 Weeks)

Domain: Mobility and Ride Sharing

Analysis of the Challenge Statement

The Business Problem

Refined Challenge Statement

By narrowing the challenge statement to university students, feature creep is stopped and the project can focus on getting students to use the app instead of making it work for everyone in the world. This puts every part through a strict design filter to see if it reduces practical friction for students or makes riding fun. This strong focus connects exchanges that focus on the user with Beryl’s business goals, like getting important feedback after the ride and making a polished mockup at the end of the project.

Bike or Scooter

Users are able to filter out easily which mode of transport they desire making the home screen page cleaner and personalised to the users choice.

Ready, Set and Go

Users can easily and quickly access a bike with information quickly and cleanly displayed to them.

Riding King or Queen

Smooth motion when accepting to ride featuring a quick and clear scan system. Incorporated leaderboard in process for small dopamine for users before riding.

All In a Good Days of Work

Live ride info is displayed and users can end a ride with one tap. Users can find out if and what badge they may have unlocked during the ride. At the end a ride summary page is shown and ability to rate a ride giving essential feedback to Beryl.

What’s in the Parking Bay Today

The parking bay icon presents transportation modes in a clear, streamlined manner.

The Race to Number One

Users can compete with friends and other users of the app by collecting gems after every ride. A fun and engaging way to entice users to use Beryl again.

Collect Them All

Additional gamification feature includes badges where users over the course of using the app can complete goals and earn achievements after evey ride.

Reflection

What I Learned

This project gave me the opportunity to learn how to leverage behavioural UX to make a utility app that is conventionally transactional, into a habit forming, engaging digital experience. By adding gamification elements such as pre-ride leaderboards and unlockable badges, we demonstrated that emotional design can be a powerful tool in transforming user habits and delivering genuine joy to a micro-mobility platform like Beryl.

I discovered that the balance between the strict operational requirements and these playful micro interactions is what builds true brand loyalty, not just functional speed, but moments of joy a user experiences during an otherwise mundane university commute.

What I Would Do Differently

If I were to do this project again I’d add a separate late night commute dark mode that’s optimised for university campuses in low light situations so students coming home to their rooms late at night can read the app more clearly and save some battery.

I would also add in direct accessibility testing much earlier in the wire-framing phase. Testing for layout glanceability and screen reader compatibility with visually or situationally impaired students would be an active step to ensure that the gamified features and core navigation systems were inherently accessible from the outset.

Impact and Results

When I presented the prototype to the stakeholders at Beryl they embraced the reward features recognising these familiar motivational features in daily apps they use.

User testing at the University of Worcester confirmed that the gamification element could turn 68% one time users (students) into regulars.

The Next Stage

After the project I was part of the product team behind a new reward feature called Beryl Bonus which gave users free minutes if they returned any lost bikes or scooters back to the parking bays. This was their first feature which rewarded users and was thanks to this project.

This feature was a success especially among students aged 18–25 as they were the biggest percentage of people (74% in Worcester) who achieved bonuses and cleaned the streets. This was just the first step into a new era of student mobility.

If you want view the full case study or just contact me email me at kaifkreato@gmail.com