Mapping Mobility: A Research-Driven Redesign for BMW’s ReachNow

Drive, Home & Ride Screens

Accessibility considerations were key in the design choices I made - color contrast, CTA spacing, legibility, minimal content presented

Personas

Creating personas helped keep the team focused on ReachNow member’s goals, needs and pain points.

Journey Map

We planned a workshop to co-create 9 journey maps representing core personas that would use each of the three ReachNow services. The journey maps helped us pinpoint areas where opportunities existed and ultimately led to which features we prioritized in design and build.

Wireframes

We used the wireframes to communicate our recommendations for app flow and functionality, but also to begin testing with users.

Usability Testing

During our design sprints I would conduct informal tests to help our team determine which flows were more usable, and/or to help stakeholders understand where users were struggling. We also conducted more formal usability testing at key milestones with click through prototypes.

Overview

ReachNow, a mobility service operated by BMW in Seattle, Portland, and Brooklyn, set out to create an integrated digital experience that unified car sharing, ride hailing, and multi-day rentals within a single mobile application (iOS and Android). This initiative aimed to position ReachNow as the first in the industry to offer multiple mobility solutions through one platform, aligning with their broader vision of shaping the future of urban transportation.

My Role

As part of a cross-functional design and strategy team, I contributed across multiple phases of the project:

Co-planned and facilitated a multi-day workshop with client stakeholders to map key user journeys
Developed user personas and behavioral archetypes to guide decision-making across teams
Designed wireframes for core areas of the app
Built prototypes and wrote discussion guides for usability testing
Moderated in-person testing sessions and supported ongoing iterative testing
Advocated for accessibility best practices across the product experience

Process

To ground ourselves in empathy for the target ReachNow members, our team of UX and visual designers:

• Conducted over 50 interviews with stakeholders and end users

• Shadowed customer service calls

• Interviewed customer service reps

• Analyzed member reviews

This led to the development of eight distinct personas, each with unique use-cases for how they would use ReachNow’s mobility services to navigate their world. With the personas in hand, we created a workshop where the ReachNow stakeholders and Smashing Ideas team members could document the journeys each of the personas would encounter for car sharing, reserving and ride hailing. The maps made it clear where members were experiencing moments of joy, but also where there were opportunities for improvement.

The personas and journey maps enabled stakeholders to prioritize and align on target member needs and features that defined the test and pilot releases. Once we started wireframing and could create initial prototypes, we conducted unmoderated remote testing and in-person, moderated testing via click-through prototypes. This generated weekly user insights that could be implemented directly into the design sprints.

During this whole process, I was able to collaborate with the client as well as our development team. Frequent user research coupled with ongoing collaboration enabled me to quickly test our different flows and design an experience that was intuitive and simple to use.

Accolades

“Smashing Ideas exceeded our expectations, first learning and understanding our business and getting in the minds of our Members and then defining, iterating and collaborating across our collective engineering and product teams to deliver a cohesive app experience that will delight ReachNow Members and propel our business forward.” – Bradley James, Head of Technology, ReachNow