Financial Journey · Product Design
When the car locks, every minute counts.
I redesigned the car payment and unlock journey so that the lock was easy to understand, the payment easy to reach and the unlock predictable — without drivers having to rely on customer support.
Product Designer — End-to-end
Confidentiality note: This case presents the design process and the project's key learnings. Due to confidentiality (NDA), some data, metrics, values and strategic information have been omitted or generalised.
01The problem
The car was locked. But users didn't really know what happened next.
Beyond spotting the outstanding payment, drivers had to work out how to solve the problem and then wait for the release without being able to follow the process clearly.
The situation was especially critical because, for many ride-hailing drivers, the car is a tool for work.
Where the experience broke down
- 01No warningThe vehicle could be locked before users noticed anything was outstanding.
- 02No shortcutNo widget on the Home screen showed the lock and the action required.
- 03No contextFinding out why meant digging through the financial information or contacting customer support.
- 04No follow-upAfter payment, the unlock had no explicit steps.
- 05No estimateUsers couldn't tell how long it would take or where the resolution stood.
The lack of information increased anxiety and reliance on customer support.
My role · End-to-end Product Design
- Understanding the problem
- Evidence synthesis
- Hierarchy and flows
- Reducing cognitive load
- Solution design
- Usability testing
- Experience refinement
Part of the research was carried out in partnership with other people on the team.
02The critical moment
Users had to chase the answer.
Before the redesign, the lock happened without a clear explanation in the app. Users might have had a sense of why, but they had to actively hunt for the answer.
After payment, the app showed no explicit step of the unlock process.
The journey before the redesign
- Car locks
- User notices the problem
- Has to find out why
- Looks for the financial area
- Finds the debt
- Makes the payment
- ?
- Has to contact support
- Waits for the unlock
03Evidence
The problem showed up in different signals.
No single source explained what was happening. The investigation was built by crossing qualitative and quantitative signals until they pointed to the same place.
Two signals that shaped the decisions
A · Relationship with money
87%
checked their work income and expenses at least once a week.
Quantitative survey · hundreds of active and inactive drivers
Context on how drivers relate to money — it does not measure the effect of the redesign.
B · Understanding payments
~77%
of the tickets analysed involved difficulty reconciling payments between the ride-hailing platform and the company.
<1%of the cases analysed involved an actual billing error.
Analysis of financial support tickets
Many difficulties came from understanding the information available, not necessarily from billing errors. The finding applies to the tickets analysed, not to all financial support.
Research sources
- Interviews
- Usability tests
- Tracking data
- Support tickets
- Quantitative surveys
- Previous research
- Internal benchmark
- Another business unit
Insight
The difficulty wasn't simply paying off a debt. The experience was putting a barrier between users and the payment methods already available to them.
The hypothesis that changed
Before
Before this project, I believed our users struggled financially — especially to earn enough and pay off their outstanding debts.
After
After it, I came to understand that, in reality, a poor experience was hiding the payment methods from our users and making them harder to reach.
Drivers didn't just need to pay a debt.They needed to understand what caused the lock, how to solve it and where the vehicle's release stood.
04Design decisions
The solution had to reduce uncertainty, not just make payment easier.
Three decisions connected what the evidence showed to what the experience came to do.
- 01
Make the problem visible
The lock widget on the Home screen made the situation clearer and offered a direct path to resolving it.
Design hypothesis
In an urgent situation, users shouldn't have to search for the financial feature to find out what to do.
The widget: one entry point, three moments
- Before paymentAlert and context
- During the processProgress tracking
- After resolutionConfirmation of success
Once the problem is solved, the widget disappears after the first visit, leaving only the confirmation that the car is unlocked.
- 02
Connect payment and unlock
The journey began to present what was outstanding and the action required more clearly.
The goal was to reduce cognitive load in a complex flow, taking into account the wide range of user profiles and needs.
- 03
Make the process trackable
After payment, users could see explicit unlock steps, with the status updated as the process moves forward.
05The solution
From discovery to resolution.
The journey after the redesign
- 01Opens the app
- 02Sees the alert
- 03Opens the debt
- 04Makes the payment
- 05Follows the processing
- 06Receives updates
- 07Vehicle unlocked
Unlock steps
After payment, the unlock is no longer a silent wait. Each step updates as the process moves forward.
Estimate shown in the product
Up to 30 min after payment
This is the estimate displayed in the interface, not a guaranteed time for every unlock.
Schematic of the states — not the final interface.
- 01
Checking your payment
- 02
Getting everything ready to unlock
Unlock started
- 03
Car unlocked
06Before / After
From unanswered questions to a situation under control.
Before
“I have a problem, but I don't know what's going on.”
- What happened?
- Where do I fix this?
- Did my payment go through?
- When will I get my car back?
- Customer support
After
“I know what I need to solve and I can follow the process until the car is released.”
- There is a problem.
- Here is where it comes from.
- Here is what you need to do.
- Here is the status.
- Your car has been unlocked.
An interpretive synthesis of the change in experience — not literal user quotes.
Less uncertainty.More autonomy.
07Validation
We tested before scaling.
The solution was iterated on real user behaviour — not just the team's perception.
- In-person usability tests5 of 5participants completed the unlock and multiple-invoice flow.Observed in five in-person usability tests. The sample is small and offers early evidence of understanding and task completion — not an estimate of success across the whole user base.
- Supporting evidence1,000+respondents in an unmoderated survey on the redesigned experience.A separate study from the in-person tests. Its results are not detailed in this case.
Throughout the iteration, rounds of guerrilla testing at the branches, with 5 to 8 users each, also informed the refinements.
Decisions backed by
- Tracking
- Customer support
- Previous research
- Quantitative surveys
- Interviews
- Internal benchmark
08Impact
A clearer experience. A measurable business result.
+4.4 ppin the collection rate of revenue expected on D+1
Change after the new journey. Absolute values and targets have been omitted for confidentiality.
The redesigned journey was associated with an increase of 4.4 percentage points in the collection of revenue expected on D+1. The result shows how much it matters to reduce friction at a critical step of the financial experience.
Result recorded in the context of the main journey. The change should not be attributed solely to the redesign without evidence of causal isolation.
Usage
28k+visits to the new experience
Cumulative total as of October 2026. Count of visits recorded in the experience; does not represent unique users.
What started to happen next
- VisibilityUsers could finally understand what was happening.
- PredictabilityThe unlock process gained clear, explicit states.
- AutonomyUsers could follow the resolution without relying solely on customer support.
09Next step
From solving the lock to anticipating the problem.
The natural evolution of the experience is to act before the lock happens.
Outstanding debts+Debts close to their due date
- Predictive communication
- User action
- Lock avoided
Today the experience helps resolve the lock. The next step is helping users avoid it.
10Challenge and design decision
Reducing cognitive load is not the same as removing complexity.
The legacy system was one of the project's main challenges. With different user profiles and a naturally complex journey, the decision was to reduce cognitive load without hiding the complexity people needed to understand the process.
11Learning
I went in thinking about debt. I came out understanding experience.
Sometimes the problem isn't the solution users don't use. It's the experience that keeps them from reaching it.