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.

A black background infographic showing different packaging design elements: an arrow, a series of move instructions, a graphic with white and gray areas labeled as safety colors, and a U frame with a product inside. Each element includes descriptive text about its function or purpose.

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.

A digital rendering of a black product box with the word 'tech' embossed on it, showing a 3D perspective, with text indicating design features that aid user orientation.
A black box containing a letter from the Uber CEO and a U-Beam.
Open Uber branding kit with hidden instructional information and cable inside a black box.

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.

A black instruction booklet with the text "Let's go" and an arrow pointing to the right on its cover; open inside pages show detailed instructions and diagrams for installing a device, including pairing instructions via Bluetooth.

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.

Pixelated computer screen displaying a black background with white characters including the alphabet, numbers, and common symbols.

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.