Uber Beacon
Safety was a major business focus for Uber during my tenure, in particular rider safety. Uber didn’t create many hardware products, but the Brand Experience team had the opportunity to develop the Beacon from start to finish. This illuminated trade dress was visible at over 150 feet away, and loved by the drivers.
Packaging
The benefit of creating a scalable design system that ties to the business goals is that we had almost everything we needed to bring this product to life. As a result, we could focus on the experience instead of creating new design components.
For Beacon, we leaned into the following elements of Uber’s design system.
We designed the packaging for Beacon to make Uber drivers feel special. Drivers love this product because it helps get the right customer into their car. It also helps them be great hosts, which many drivers are passionate about. We also ensured the unboxing experience was easy to understand regardless of the driver's first language.
I’m a big fan of progressive disclosure when it comes to experiences. In this case, we didn’t want to overwhelm drivers with information at the wrong time. Many speak English as their second language, so breaking the instruction into smaller bite-size moments helped make installation more accessible with less reliance on support.
Hardware & Software
Regarding the product experience, we continued our thinking from the physical onboarding to make installation easy for drivers. After many iterations, we simplified the onboarding to three key screens.
Once we got into the hardware space we realized that we needed to create an extension of the Uber Move typeface to work with our display on the back of the Beacon.
Uber Beacon helped to deliver on Uber's safety promises by ensuring riders got into the right car. By choosing a color in their app, they would know that the Uber pulling up was indeed their driver.
We also added in car messaging to help with rider safety and etiquette. Due to the typographic nature of the U Frame, this trade dress was recognizable nearly 150 feet away, far outperforming its competitors.
This product is live in the following cities: Atlanta, Baltimore-Maryland, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, Phoenix, Tampa Bay, and Washington, DC.