Revolutionizing urban mobility with a leader in sustainable transportation solutions
ZIPCAR.COM
BUSINESS CHALLENGE: Designing a Seamless End-to-End Flow for Zipcar
Guiding users through pickup, driving, return, and reservation completion
Zipcar is one of the world’s leading car-sharing services, offering flexible, self-service access to vehicles by the hour or day. With a focus on urban mobility and reducing personal car ownership, Zipcar enables members to reserve, unlock, and drive cars from their phones—without the hassle of rental counters or long-term commitments. In this challenge, I was asked to rethink the existing flow and propose an improved, more intuitive user flow for a typical Zipcar journey: picking up a reserved vehicle, driving to a destination, returning the car to the original location, and successfully ending the reservation. While each of these steps might seem simple on their own, the challenge lies in making the entire experience feel cohesive, frictionless, and trustworthy—especially for new users unfamiliar with shared mobility. This case study walks through my process of mapping the task flow, identifying edge cases, and designing key touchpoints with a focus on usability, clarity, and confidence throughout the trip lifecycle.
APPROACH: COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
To inform my approach, I conducted a competitive analysis of apps from both traditional rental services (Enterprise, Hertz, Avis, and Budget) and two other modern mobility platforms (Uber and CitiBike). I evaluated onboarding, in-app navigation, support flows, and reservation handoffs to understand how each service sets expectations, builds trust, and communicates next steps. This helped me identify key UX opportunities—like real-time feedback, contextual guidance, and confidence-building confirmations—that could differentiate the Zipcar experience while addressing user anxieties around car-sharing logistics.
SURFACED FEEDBACK FROM USER INTERVIEWS
10 interviews were conducted across the team. I covered 3 and the remainder were done by the rest of the team. The pain points that surfaced that related directly to the part of the flow I was assigned were:
Receiving an unclean vehicle was almost a universal theme across interviews—and some interviewees said they had stopped using Zipcar because of it. Zipcar uses an honor system-of-sorts as it's way to make sure cars are left in good condition. Interviewees mentioned cars sometimes "smelled like food" or "cigarettes" (there is a non-smoking policy) and that it was common to find garbage on the floors and sometimes left in cupholders, etc.
ESTABLISHING TASK FLOW
User picks up car at location → Drives (Locks and Unlocks Remotely) → Returns car to location → Ends reservation
INITIAL WIREFRAMES FOR USER TESTING
Originally a "rewards" pop-up was going to be part of this flow, but for time and overall scope, it was not part of the MVP and put on a list of "nice to haves" for later iterations/tests.
LOCKING/UNLOCKING
CHECKLIST
of original interviewees who were asked to complete the task of "Ending Reservation | Checking Out"
of original interviewees did not experience any hangups or issues when testing the prototype.
LEARNINGS AND FUTURE PROPOSED TESTS
In order to keep Zipcar current and competitive in the market, I would like to test ways outside of the app for users to easily access the lock and unlock features. Initial thoughts were home screen widgets and a simple lock/unlock app for wearables.
Initial mockup based on initial animation sketch.
Deliverable version of Apple watchOS app
Proposed iOS widgets for easy locking and unlocking.