Building Magical Experiences Through Smart Iteration

Amritha Prasad // @amrithap

HI, I’M AMRITHA

Carnegie Mellon University

Lover of Bollywood

Fan of Aziz Ansari

Currently at Uber

Quality is a bar, and we’re challenged to constantly raise it.

Riders, Drivers & More

Uber + Spotify

THE STORY

An Epic Saga

Your Ride. Your Music.

With Some Villains

A hard deadline & tight timeline

We have no idea how people will want to listen to music inside of Ubers

Overcoming the obstacles

1 Forming Design Principles !

2 Anticipating the Gaps

FORMING DESIGN PRINCIPLES

What is the most lightweight thing to build that will delight users?

Everyone had their own assumptions and ideas

We create design principles

“A list of guiding phrases that help the team make

important decisions.”-Jared Spool, “Creating Great Design Principles: 6 Counter-Intuitive Tests”

Most importantly they stem from research

Any user research is absolutely better than none

Brainstorm Features

Lightweight wireframes

Testing Things Out

Give access to music the way that users are used to

Provide control over what plays at a song-level

It’s not always about what just YOU want to listen to

On the driver side, it’s a choice

ANTICIPATING THE GAPS

Thinking that the product will turn out exactly how you

designed it is naive

A designer ACTUALLY has to be a ninja and anticipate danger

before it hits

Prioritization

Photo Credit: jamiearnold.com

Adapting

Test it like it’s hot

Prioritize

Adapt

Test

Learn

THE RIDE GOES ON

Uber + Spotify

Together at last

1 Forming Design Principles !

2 Anticipating the Gaps

This is just the beginning, the product is in its infancy

Staying on top of social media is a great way to get early

feedback

I’m excited to learn & iterate.

Thank you