1 | Overview

2 | Tagalong

3 | User Flows

4 | The Process

5 | Reflections

01 | Overview

THE ASK

Help new students integrate into life on VCU Campus.

Context

VCU Brandcenter Student Project

Skills

User Research

UI/UX Design

Branding

Prototyping

Animation

Tools

After Effects

Figma

illustrator

Background

Nearly half (47%) of college students don’t have a car, but only 7% of college students carpool. When asked why, most said they would, if the asking part wasn’t so… awkward. Making friends in college is hard enough, and constantly asking for rides can make students feel like a burden. This fear of rejection stops carpools before they start.

Opportunity

How might we provide college students with access to carpool opportunities?

02 | Tagalong

How it works

Tagalong is an entirely new rideshare experience, it’s a secure network of classmates creating and asking for rides. Through time sensitive feeds, group sharing, and location optimization, carpooling has never been easier. With Tagalong you're not in the way, you're on the way.

Privacy and Security

Safety is the utmost priority. To help ensure the safety of tagalong users, there will be a double authentication system to verify users are members of the University. During orientation, students will receive a tagalong code unique to their school, which can also be found on posters around campus. During the onboarding process, users will have to provide their code and university-sanctioned email address to complete account registration.

Group sharing

Users can share posts to public or private groups. These groups are perfect for clubs and organizations, specialized colleges, and hometown travel. For large scale Universities the group sharing tool is vital for tagalongs success.

Navigation

Tagalong's persistent side navigation allows users to easily navigate time-sensitive feeds and quickly find rides that suit their schedules.

03 | USER FLOWS

ACCOUNT CREATION

Post CREATION

Accepting ride

Full Walk through

04 | The Process

User Persona - Driver

User Persona - Taging along

Site Map

Preliminary designs

In the preliminary stages of designing Tagalong, I knew there needed to be a way for users to easily navigate through different types of content. How the post would be organized in the feed was a vital determinant of the kind of app tagalong would be. After interviewing students who strictly use the app to tag along, I realized that creating separate feeds for drivers and those tagging along would alienate audiences and generate more work for the user.

The best way for the feed to present posts would be chronologically instead of algorithmically. Since rides were broken into two groups, ASAP and COMING UP, I knew there needed to be a way to navigate between the two easily.

I talked to users about their experience with other platforms that utilize dual feeds, like TikTok, and how they interact with that system and found that their experiences weren't ideal.

"I forget that TikTok has multiple feeds. I only use the explore feed and never check the others."- Erin 23

This led me to utilize persistent side navigation, where the button illuminates when viewing its respective category. Users can tap the side nav and have their feed display the relevant posts. They also do not have to use the side nav, and if they continue to scroll, they will be able to view all posts, like any other feed.

Users who have created rides or committed to other rides will appear pinned at the top of their feed.

In the preliminary stages of designing tagalong, I knew there needed to be a way for users to easily navigate through different types of content. How the post would be organized in the feed was a vital determinant of the kind of app tagalong would be. After interviewing students who strictly use the app to tag along, I realized that creating separate feeds for drivers and those tagging along would alienate audiences and generate more work for the user.

I talked to users about their experience with other platforms that utilize dual feeds, like TikTok, and how they interact with that system and found that their experiences weren't ideal.

"I forget that TikTok has multiple feeds. I only use the explore feed and never check the others."- Erin 23

Users who have created rides or committed to other rides will appear pinned at the top of their feed.

I talked to users about their experience with other platforms that utilize dual feeds, like TikTok, and how they interact with that system and found that their experiences weren't ideal.

"I forget that TikTok has multiple feeds. I only use the explore feed and never check the others."- Erin 23

Users who have created rides or committed to other rides will appear pinned at the top of their feed.

05 | Reflections

I learned so much from this project. It was trial and error, seeing what work and what doesn’t and reiterating and reiterating. This project really highlighted the importance of designing through user flows and use cases. There isn’t an app out there similar to this, so starting from square one with no true blueprint was challenging yet so rewarding.