Taking Germany’s Scooter Sharing to the Next Level

Taking Germany’s shared mobility to the next level with design

At our Berlin studio, we see ideas become a reality every day, and emmy, a shared electric scooter service, is a perfect example. What started as an idea in a park, has become a fleet of over 1,600 scooters and 150,000 customers in just two years, evolving into one of Germany’s most prominent shared mobility startups. But competition is stiff, and mobility providers are fighting tooth and nail to win and retain customers with price, design, and innovative features.

emmy came to Goodpatch for help redesigning their app: “How do we simplify the emmy rental process and build an onboarding experience that is engaging, delightful, and that creates an emotional bond between user and product?” As automotive lovers and avid emmy users ourselves, we were excited to partner with an established startup team to develop their first connected product.

It’s about creating fans, not just users

After two years of using a generic, white-label app solution, emmy was ready to invest in design, lean into their user’s experience, and build a shared mobility product unique to their users’ needs.

We started by doing an in-depth analysis of the current product. Using insights gathered from the emmy team, we identified users’ pain points and recreated the user flow. To do this, we created a prototype that integrated these insights and that could be used to test our assumptions.

Using our in-house and fully equipped user testing room, we shared the prototype with users, interviewed them about the experience and observed them in the most non-invasive way possible. During this testing, we were able to experience the emotional value of the product firsthand. We realized that emmy users aren’t just commuters who want to get from A to B: They are fans who use the red scooters to explore their city. emmy users want the app to be as simple and carefree as their Berlin-lifestyle.

Turning user pain points into design solutions

Our most significant change was to the onboarding experience, which was a big pain point reported by users: This was the important process of unlocking the scooter, opening the helmet box, and using the kickstand – a set of tasks that take routine. So we made the onboarding experience as easy as possible, illustrating each step to guide users through the complete experience.

In the third phase of development, we delivered the new design to the emmy development team to create a beautiful product, a small group of users love, or what we call a minimum lovable product.