Connecting women at the touch of a button

Using design thinking to build a better Lyft experience for women+ riders and drivers.

Illustration by Conor Buckley

Helping women and nonbinary drivers more confidently get behind the wheel

In early September, we launched Women+ Connect, a new feature that matches women and nonbinary drivers and riders together more frequently. This was a highly requested feature, so we set out to create it. Women+ Connect was no small undertaking and it took a large group of cross-functional partners working together to get it off the ground. From a design perspective, here’s a brief snippet of how the team helped create Women+ Connect.

Using design thinking to shape a new feature

A few core principles kept our design team focused as we developed Women+ Connect. Since we were working with numerous stakeholders, it was crucial to have clear touchpoints to bring us back to what was most important.

1. Inclusivity at the core — The “+” in Women+ Connect was important from the start. In order to create a feature that includes underrepresented gender minorities, nonbinary people were always part of the conversation. We also wanted the feature to be clear–so we prioritized explaining how the feature works, who can use it, and what information would be needed.
2. Put drivers and riders in control — We designed Women+ Connect to easily fit into riders’ and drivers’ lives. Riders and drivers are able to turn Women+ Connect on or off as often as they’d like, giving them more flexibility and control over how they ride.
3. Facilitate a great experience — Women+ Connect is a preference, not a filter. Ensuring that everyone who orders a ride is able to get one. Our goal is to see more women and nonbinary drivers join our platform and be able to match with women and nonbinary riders. That being said, when a women+ match isn’t available users will still be matched with men.

How it came together: Women+ Connect

Here are a few screenshots of Women+ Connect in action. While additional changes are in the works, each of these principles shows up in the feature.

The Women+ Connect Driver experience

The Women+ Connect Rider experience

Channeling Lyft’s history of advocacy

Lyft has continually been supportive of LGBTQIA+ rights. Our program Round Up & Donate, where users can round up the cost of their ride and donate it to the charity of their choice, has generated over $4.5 million in donations to the LGBTQ advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign. We were also the first rideshare app to allow riders and drivers to set their preferred pronouns.

To help create a feature where riders and drivers feel included and supported, we conducted extensive user research and worked with internal and external organizations like LyftOut, HRC, It’s On Us, and the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives to inform our approach before launching.

Continuing to strive for accessibility

We built Women+ Connect in the hopes of making rideshare more accessible to people who are historically underrepresented. We plan to continue to use this framework to keep designing solutions that make our product better for everyone who uses it.

Want to read more?

Interested in finding out more details about the product or how to get started? Check out these links below:

• From Lyft: https://www.lyft.com/women+
• From Lyft: https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/women-plus-connect
• For riders: https://help.lyft.com/hc/e/rider/articles/9030680293
• For drivers: https://help.lyft.com/hc/en/all/articles/3660193554
• Mashable: https://mashable.com/article/lyft-women-nonbinary-drivers

Special thanks

The launch of Women+ Connect would not have been possible without the hard work and close collaboration of our mighty team. Special thanks to Alyssa Hitchcock (design), Gwen Zhang (design), Michael Levine (product), Naomi Yarin (product), Carly Uhlman (product), Alex Michaelides (research), Sabrina Papazian (research), Alicia Ostarello (content), Joey Ricci (product marketing), Limin Shen (engineering), Xiaoyi Duan (engineering), Adi Zimmerman (engineering), Jessica Wang (engineering), Ding Luo (data science), Yijun Wu (data science), and Scott Geller (data science).

And a big thank you to our design leaders Audrey Liu, Tara Stewart, Leslie Yang, and Brian Ng.

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This article was written by Julia Green and edited by Amy Lipner, members of Lyft’s Design Team. You can read more articles about how we build and maintain design systems at Lyft here. Interested in joining our team? Check out our open roles!