DriveMY: Service Design · Logistics & Ops
SAVING A CLIENT FROM A $200K MISTAKE
A client came to me ready to burn six figures launching a high-risk chauffeur
service. I used UX research to stress-test the idea, proved the business model
was broken before a line of code was written, and pivoted them off a doomed
launch.
Role
Product Designer & Strategist
Tools & Skills
UX Research, Mobile UI Design, Brand Identity, Business Model Analysis
Collaborators
Client (Founder)
Year
2021
2 min read
“Schedule a Pick Up” - primary booking flow
The Brief
Hired to design an app. Stayed
to question the business.
A straightforward booking-app brief turned into a strategic
intervention that reshaped the entire product direction.
I was brought on to design the end-to-end experience for DriveMy; a service
where car owners hire a driver to chauffeur them in their own car. But when I
researched the target audience, the founder's core assumption (that people
would use it to get home safely after drinking) turned out to be incompatible with
how people actually behave. I flagged it before they spent a dime on
development.
The Insight
The keys weren't the fear.
Everyday habits were the killer.
Interviewing real car owners killed the founder's core assumption. The
risk wasn't trusting a stranger with the keys; it was habit and logistics.
The logistical dead-end
If people plan to drink, their default is to leave the car at home. Scheduling a chauffeur to meet them out was more hassle than the luxury was worth.
Competitive dominance
Uber and Lyft own the "getting home after a night out" moment because they need zero pre-planning. A personal driver required drop-offs and scheduling in advance.
A business built on a mistake
The model relied on a rare planning error; someone accidentally drinking
too much. You can't build a venture on hoping users fail to plan ahead.
User Testing
The biggest fixes had nothing to do with the UI.
I built and tested the full mobile flow; and the sharpest fixes
came from how people behaved, not where the buttons sat.
Driver intake was too slow
Insight
A tedious, multi-page intake just to pick a driver made the first booking feel slow and distracting.
Action
Cut the long forms and added a ‘Favorite Drivers’ feature, so users rebook someone they already trust in seconds.
Key actions were buried
Insight
Users kept opening the old side menu and hitting a dead end, unsure where their core actions lived.
Action
Restructured the hierarchy to surface the most frequent actions first, making navigation feel instant and obvious.
Before
After
Impact
The real deliverable was a $200K
mistake that never happened.
Research said the original model would fail; so I still shipped
a full brand system and mobile flow, built as an investor-ready
MVP, so the client could decide with something real in hand.
$200K
Capital Saved
Avoided on the launch of a high-risk
business model that research proved
was broken.
0 → 1
Investor-Ready MVP
A complete brand system and mobile
flow, still delivered so the client had a
fundraising-ready product if he chose
to move forward.
Pivot
Informed Client Decision
The client got both the research-
backed warning and a working MVP;
his call to make, either way.
The takeaway I carried out: in on-demand services, UX is inseparable from
business viability. A flawless booking flow is worthless if the behavior you're
designing for doesn't exist. But the research findings didn't end the engagement;
I still delivered a full MVP so the client had something tangible to pitch to
investors if he wanted to carry the idea forward anyway. Sometimes a designer's
highest-impact move is the research that reveals the risk; sometimes it's building
the thing regardless, so the client can decide with real screens in hand instead of
a hypothesis.
ALONSO ROSADO
AI-first Product Designer shipping full
products, end to end.