Survey & Interview

We conduct a survey and interview to understand the current status and tools that employees used to connect across organizations.

Key findings

• Employees want to connect with someone outside their teams/professional orbit to see what they are doing, expand their professional network.

• Employees think they build stronger, more meaningful business relationships during in-person meeting

• Employees connect with people outside their professional orbit usually through company activities, conference, and social events.

Brainstorming

We use value versus feasibility map to rank each one and select 3 of them:

Accessing Ideas

Then we use a business model canvas, market research, and feedback from an advisor to decide an idea. We end up choose Ride sharing Buddy, and here is some reason we eliminate another two ideas:

• We didn’t choose the AR office pet —
  because it’s lacking functional features that can bring continue use and motivations. If we try to combine with other functions, it might be a burden or annoyed to employees when they have to access that through the platform. Not to mention for those who don’t like pets

• We didn’t choose navigator —
  because it’s situated in a very crowd market, and it’s difficult or unnecessary to differentiate ourselves if it serves a similar function.

• We choose Ride Sharing Buddy —

  because it has fundamental user groups who use the ride-sharing method to get around and also is situated in a less crowded market.

Can ride sharing during conference provide a worthy networking opportunities?

To validate assumptions, we conducted a survey and more in-depth interviews with people who have been to conferences.

We conduct interviews to understand the status quo of networking in conference and how can we improve from there. Through survey, we gain some insights:

• 72% of conference attendees find it difficult to talk to someone popular such as a speaker or someone on different job levels.

• 68% of conference attendees felt networking in the conference could be stressful and overwhelmed.

• Conference attendees usually network during happy hours and after events but open for other networking opportunities.

User Pain Points

“I don’t know anyone at the conference, which makes it hard to initiate the conversation in a social event at the conference especially when other people might have already known each other”

“It’s very hard to network with someone who’s higher position because they already know many people and tend to network with attendees who have similar roles.”

Users Want to …

Is there a market for ride-sharing to a conference?

According to secondary research and survey —

Is there an interest for networking through ride-sharing to a conference?

To gauge rideshare networking interest, we conduct a small world pilot experiment. 7 NYC conference attendees offered ride-share option for $5 pool to NYC PM Conference on Nov 09

Key Value

Visual Guidance

Due to Auto combines its own matching algorithm with Uber’s Riders API. We want to create a consistent visual experience for users so we follows Uber’s brand black as primary color.

Before Ride -

Matching with sharing buddy

Auto uses its matching algorithm to match conference attendees up based on their profile information such as role and company.

Connect after conference

Auto enable business card info sharing and stores all the contacts so that users can maintain their connections with others.

Product Side 

Auto wants to leverage on Uber existing system as a new branch for conference. For example, Uber now has Uber Eat and Uber Event. Ideally, Auto could be integrate as Uber conference, which can benefit Uber from putting it become the main player in this area.

Function Side

After getting feedback from Microsoft advisors, we see another potential perspective beyond ride-sharing buddy. There are many times conference attendees can not find a company to walk around after certain events. This could be our next step to conduct user research to understand the potential needs of walking-buddy.