The Uber platform currently powers more than 7 billion trips every year. When we launched Uber Navigation, the world’s first navigation system designed for ridesharing, in 2017, the platform was handling 4 billion trips annually. After 5 years of growing demands, not only in app use but also in terms of ever-evolving products and features, Uber Navigation was ripe for an overhaul. Notably: As we continued to ship new trip and navigation features, cracks were starting to show in the product’s design framework. Over the course of a few years, we had shipped numerous feature improvements to the ..read more

Why we’ve changed the job title of our UX Writing team Co-authored with Jaime Walke In 2010, my job title was Content Strategist. At the time, I worked with information architects, interaction designers, graphic designers, web designers, illustrators, animators, and a slew of other talented folks to create digital experiences. At Uber, we called ourselves Product Writers. Until now, UX Writers. Now, it’s my pleasure to introduce our team as Content Designers. Let me tell you why. A recent history of Product Design The rise of companies like Facebook and Google signale ..read more

A look into how automation can supercharge the design process Uber’s Base design system offers a set of map marker components that are used extensively across our products, displayed any time we feature a map to the user. We’ve recently come across the need to showcase additional context on the map markers and settled on adding badges — an existing Base component — to achieve that. The challenge was that both the map markers and the badges had multiple variations. Markers can be customized by size, needle length, icon slots and layout behavior, while the badges can have multiple siz ..read more

What cash trips in Mexico taught me about designing for international markets at Uber As a product designer at Uber working on the Money team in Amsterdam, it’s my job to help come up with design solutions for Uber products across the globe. Designing globally presents a lot of challenges that don’t come up if you are creating products for a more limited market. We constantly see how cultural context, infrastructure, and on-the-ground realities matter to good design. The problem My team recently dealt with a good example of these challenges. On its face, the question was a simple one ..read more

In early 2018, the Uber brand team started a rebranding exercise, exploring a fresh take on what it means to be a global transportation and technology company. A new logo was developed in tandem with a bespoke sans-serif typeface called Uber Move. What followed was a natural progression towards universal symbols of iconography that could scale across all products, services, and surfaces. Here’s a glimpse into the evolution and processes. “Our typography is as unique and easy to use as we are. Inspired by the world’s best used transportation examples, it was designed to maximize its impact acro ..read more

A design manager’s guide to jumpstart career conversations with your team. Uber Eats Design & Research Offsite in Monterey Bay Aquarium, Photo credit — Cocu LiuLet’s be honest, managing can feel like you are constantly undulating between surviving and thriving. Whether you’re at the beginning stages of management or a seasoned leader of many teams, sometimes you have perfect vision for a year, and other times like you can’t see past tomorrow. Career development is one area of management that remains an elusive responsibility to many. It’s often neglected when there are other competing prio ..read more

In July 2016, I joined Uber as the first member of our Bangalore-based UX team. I was one of the earliest researchers at the company outside of the U.S., and at that point, the Bangalore office had just opened and things were still taking shape. It seemed overwhelming at first — being in a distributed office, not having any other UX team members in the office, and working with a lot of non-technical teams which were new to UX research. However, this setting gave me a lot of opportunity and autonomy. This was a company that was extremely fast, exceedingly innovative, and deeply caring of its us ..read more

By: Brook Sattler, Vince de Asis, Caitlin Thakral, and Amy Hooey Being pulled in multiple directions is a familiar feeling for all working parents. Parenting is a full-time job in itself, and many of us simultaneously pursue a full-time career. It’s a challenging dichotomy: when we’re at work, what is going on at home can preoccupy our minds, and when we’re at home, we’re always only one email notification away from being pulled back into thinking about work. The tech industry in particular is famous for an “always on” work mentality and overflowing calendars, and it’s easy to find ourselves t ..read more

Logo design by Ryan KozielIn the late 20th century, the dominant technological question was “How do we learn better?” In the early 21st, that question has been followed by “How do we better use the things we’ve learned?” Uber is powered by information. Chances are good that your company is, too. We’ve all had firsthand experiences of an inconvenient truth: information is only as good as our ability to make use of it. If a roadmap is locked in the glove compartment, no matter how detailed it is, it’s not much use on a road trip. Managing, sharing, and learning from that information is the key t ..read more

This morning, I took a Jump bike to my office in San Francisco. As I write this, an Uber driver in Bangkok is taking a customer home on a ..read more