Taxi App for Drivers — Real-time Data and Smart Maps Features

Business domain: Transport
Service: Visual Design Services, Mobile Development
Technologies: Kotlin, Java

Business overview

The company is a global taxi aggregator that supports over a million users in two separate mobile applications for taxi clients and drivers. The client had the ambitious goal to outperform market leaders and grow their user base.

They sought a reliable vendor who would address the scope with proper tech and selected NIX as a proven expert.

The range of tasks for NIX was the following:

Improve the motivation program for taxi drivers to conquer a more expansive audience by creating a special feature
Enhance user experience and enrich app functionality
Speed up the process of feature releases

Solution

To improve the motivation program for the taxi drivers, the NIX engineers:

Developed an Android app from scratch that works as an auxiliary app for the taxi service and provides an opportunity to improve route quality, thus selecting the most optimal route. The app operates as a video recorder, recording GPS locations and sending content to the server

Added new functionality for drivers to get priority orders if they have a good rating and use the video recorder app for enhancing routes

To improve the user experience, the NIX team:

Integrated a map that can simultaneously inform drivers about road situations

Provided taxi drivers with the ability to locate the customer on the map, increasing the accuracy of taxi delivery and making it less time-consuming

Added a feature that allows the user and the taxi driver to see the same route, which enhances the ride's security

To speed up the release of the feature, we performed refactoring of the current Android app for drivers and developed a highly flexible multi-module architecture that ensures:

Scalability for simultaneous development by a large number of developers and A/B testing on real users

Ability to turn on or off specific features for users depending on the city or taxi company and ensure stability if some functionality fails

Dynamic delivery by installing and removing parts of an app while running to reduce the application's space

Outcome

The client received an upgraded taxi app that provides unparalleled benefits to drivers, giving them real-time information and showing various routes depending on the users’ locations and preferences. Moreover, the NIX team developed a new Android app from scratch for photo and video recording that captures road signs and traffic lights and sends them to the server, providing real-time data for the drivers.

All enhancements helped the client to launch the updated product and market it in a timely manner, acquire a vast client base in the million-person cities, and become one of two country leaders.