Lyft Family
A rideshare product for families of all kinds
Many Lyft passengers are parents, specifically parents with adult children who are partially financially dependent. When parents give their credit card info, they don’t always know when charges are made, causing concern for potential fraud on their accounts. Parents also want to know that their loved ones get from point A to point B safely when requesting rides on behalf of someone else.
Problem
Solution
Lyft Family, a joint account that centralizes payments and shares in-ride locations with the account admin.
I led the content design, helped design the flow, and built the word bank for Lyft Family. The principles I used to guide the content design were assurance, simplicity, and inclusion.
Assurance was critical. I designed transparency in pay and safety into all parts of the experience.
Family is often thought of as our family of origin, a group of one or more parents and their children living together as a unit. However, family are also the people we find along the way in life. Knowing this product could be adopted by all kinds of groups, I kept the content strategy agnostic of the dictionary definition of family, helping foster inclusivity throughout the experience.
Regardless of whether the user in the joint account is the family admin or a family member, the experience should be consistent in its simplicity. This consistency and simplicity helps build trust in a product where trust is key.
Approach
Design note: the designs below show the chronological flow of creating a family account, adding or removing a family member, joining a family account, and more. Check the top of each screen to see whether the user is the family account admin or a member of the family account.
FAMILY ADMIN
The Lyft Family takeover screen targets specifically users who are already taking and sending these types of rides.
FAMILY ADMIN
I included product education even in the contact consent modals.
FAMILY ADMIN
Education on how the payment method will be shared is included throughout the flow.
FAMILY MEMBER
When the family member slides open the push notification, they’ll see info about the family account will work.
FAMILY ADMIN
Family admin view of the family account
home screen.
FAMILY MEMBER
Before a family member requests a ride, the payment indicator pill above the CTA notifies the user that they’re using the shared family payment method.
FAMILY ADMIN
Removing a family member means more work should the family admin want to re-add them, so the visual designer and I opted for a more interruptive modal.
FAMILY ADMIN
Transparency about the payment method being shared and how payment works with Lyft Family are imbued throughout the designs.
FAMILY ADMIN
Again, accidentally sharing your payment method with the wrong person could be a costly mistake. I doubled-down on notifying the family admin of this.
FAMILY MEMBER
After accepting the family account invitation, a quick toast keeps the flow lightweight.
FAMILY MEMBER
Family member view of the family account
home screen.
FAMILY ADMIN
When a family admin looks at a family member’s profile, they can see in-ride location sharing info.
FAMILY ADMIN
Rather than use “son,” “daughter,” or “child,” I balanced inclusivity with the increased character count of “family member,” a compromise I’m proud to stand by in this use case.
FAMILY ADMIN
Because the word “family” is often associated with children younger than 18, I repeated the age requirement on this part of the experience. This screen only renders when invitees already have a Lyft account.
FAMILY MEMBER
After the family admin invites the person they’ve chosen, the family member receives this push notification. Rides will, in effect, be free for this person, so I nudged the value prop and amped the excitement with an exclamation point.
FAMILY ADMIN
When a family admin invites someone who doesn’t have a Lyft account, they’ll be prompted to invite the invitees to download the app.
FAMILY MEMBER
Both family admins and members can see who else is in their family account.
FAMILY ADMIN
Selecting the in-ride location sharing tab will let the family admin see whether the family member is sharing their location or not.
Design on Lyft Family concluded in early 2020 after about two years of work, meaning that its rollout coincided with the pandemic. As a result, we only met one of three top-line OKRs with Lyft Family. 🥲