FIELD RESEARCH AT UBER

• Uber involved itself to understand the physical, emotional, and social

contexts in which people engage with their products. It is important for
them because their services completely depend upon interactions and
experiences that happens outside of an app.

• They found out that key service moments are affected by various factors
that are beyond control: public infrastructure, differences between riders
and driver-partners, including varying social and cultural norms.

• So, they came up with the idea of need of adapting and responding to such
dynamic factors. So, at first they looked upon defining the problem clearly
before designing a solution.
• The Uber Design Research team uses a range of research methods to uncover
what matters most to riders and partners, and how their product helps or hinders
the customers.

• Often, they invite the customers to their lab to participate in interviews and
usability studies. They also conduct phone interviews, surveys and unmoderated
usability studies to reach riders and partners all round the world.

• But they found out there are certain things that participants don’t express. The
participants see them as small annoyances and adjust to them.

• So, they involved themselves in field research by going out of the lab and into
the world to talk with and observe people in their environment.

• They believed that instead of spending an hour interviewing someone its better
for then to take an Uber ride with them and see their point of view first-hand.
FIELD RESEARCH UNCOVERS
WORKAROUNDS
 While researching a new feature for the Uber Partner app, a member of the
research team will go out driving with partners and give them real world
scenarios and tasks to take.
 Doing so not only the researcher can observe how the app functioning but
also physical artifacts that the partner interacts with.
 FIELD RESEARCH SHOWS THE EFFECTS OF
PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

 Different researchers went to different locations. One of them went to

China. Significant differences were observed in the physical environment
that are unique to specific locations and cannot be understood from a
distance.

 For example- barriers that are meant to control pedestrian entry into
roadways extend multiple blocks along the sides of the road. Also it was
observed that highways run above street level. These small physical
differences could wreak havoc on Uber services.
 UBER AIR- The future of urban mobility

 The Uber Air elevate team is developing shared air transportation planned
for 2023 between suburbs and cities and ultimately with in cities.
 Uber is working with their Elevate network partners to launch fleets of
small, electric VTOL( Vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft in Dallas, Los
Angeles, and Melbourne.
 Advanced Technology Centre Paris(ATCP) will be Uber’s first research and
developmental hub outside North America.
 Investment of 20 million into developing technologies and capabilities.
 Build future of urban aviation and begin testing as early as 2020.
 https://youtu.be/JuWOUEFB_IQ
 Continued…

 ATCP supports this vision by building

artificial intelligence along with
optimization and airspace
management systems to support
uber air at scale.

 The initial focus on ATCP is digital

sciences, such as artificial
intelligence for decision making and
increased automation, optimization
and the safety of software systems
 SKYPORTS

 A network of distributed skyports is

being planned to enable Uber Air
operations.
 Skyports require all new designs to
handle an unprecedented number
of takings and landings
 The top names in architecture,
designs, and engineering are
devising solutions capable of
handling up to 1000 landings per
hour, even within footprints as
dense as an acre or 2.
 Core AI technology and Uber
research design team are working
towards it.
 UBER LITE
 Uber lite is a simple version of the rider app and it works on any android
app.
 Person can download the app without a strong connection and wifi.
 It saves storage and data
 Uber lite app is light, reliable , reduce the data usage and it is simple to learn
and use.

RESEARCH BASED ON UBER LITE

 During its research , the company found that more than 35 percent of its riders in
emerging markets used the app in areas with low connectivity( sub-3G conditions) .
As a result , they often couldn’t book a ride successfully.
 To address this challenge, uber lite was built , a rider app designed for use on older
android devices and in areas where network infrastructure may not really serve LTE
data connectivity.
 Motivation behind uber lite
 In 2017 a task force made up of members from uber research ,
engineering teams was formed to understand and address the pain
points for riders with old android devices in low connectivity regions.
 The research was done to understand rider behavior and came with
simplified UI .which could be restructured and trimmed down to make it
more lightweight.
 Research found that the new back –end communication model and
information architecture also served to reduce bandwidth usage without
bloating the android app size.
 In 2018 also involved research into the requirements of riders around
the world, Taking into account their available phones and wireless
networks.
 Based on the research , they determined that the new app should exhibit a light
look , feel and operation, with both download and install using a little bandwidth
and memory as possible
 Under 5 mega bytes: Keeping the rider apps download size under 5 megabytes
and on device size under 25 megabytes enables blazing fast install and download
speeds even in degraded network conditions
 Maps on tap: Uber lite only displays maps, which take up a lot bandwidth , if
desired .Riders can optionally see a basic live map if needed.
 Server- driven client :Uber lite leverages a thin orchestration layer of services
and back –end components to calculate, computer and present jobs that need
 Self Driving Car (UBER Advanced Technologies Group)

 The driver represents the single largest expense in

non-autonomous ride-sharing at 80% of the total
per mile cost, according to research firm Frost &
Sullivan. By removing the driver from the equation,
fully autonomous vehicles dramatically lower the
cost of a ride while boosting its addressable market
 Uber’s self-driving car division, the Advanced
Technologies Group (ATG), has taken a new
approach to autonomous driving since a fatal crash
involving one of its vehicles.
 Uber plans to launch its self-driving cars in pockets
of cities where weather, demand and other
conditions are most favorable.
 Ultimately, the new strategy is designed to help
Uber drive down costs as it seeks to show investors
it has a clear path to profitability.
 Continued….
 Uber first announced its intentions to amass a fleet
of automatic cars in February 2015, which happened
to be the same week that Google announced its own
interest in autonomous car technology.
 The project kicked off in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
where Uber had hired a bunch of researchers from
Carnegie Mellon University and helped revitalize
Pittsburgh’s Strip district with the opening of the
company’s Advanced Technologies Center.
 The company has a self-driving transportation lab in
Toronto.
 Some areas of research
 They have spent years tooling around
roads in various cities, gathering data to
develop models for identifying objects and
predicting what they will do. 
 Probabilistic pedestrian behavior prediction.
 Identifying unknown instance for autonomous
driving.
 Exploiting HD maps for 3D object detection.
 Deep multi sensor lane detection
 Deep signals: Predicting intend of drivers
through visual signals
Video

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27OuOCeZmwI
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E5IQJj_oKY
THANK
YOU

 DONE BY
 191113 – Ganga C V
 191114 – Iffat Tabassum Rahman
 191115 – Jyothi Dechamma
 191116 – Kachi Reddy Sirisha Reddy