Elite Rides
Renting a car involves contracts, inspections, and trust between strangers. I designed a dual-sided mobile marketplace that makes all of it feel simple.
BRAND
Elite Rides
ROLE
UX Design Lead
TIMELINE
2021
WHY DID THIS PROJECT EXIST?
Elite Rides is a two-sided marketplace: customers rent vehicles, owners list and lease their own. Every step of the traditional process; listing, insurance, inspection, contracting, payment was bureaucratic, paper-heavy, and trust-sensitive. The product had to unify discovery, verification, documentation, and payment into one mobile-first flow serving two user groups with conflicting priorities.
As UX design lead, I owned product structure, information architecture, end-to-end flows, and the mobile UI.
WHAT WAS HARD ABOUT IT?
01.
Two user groups with different priorities in one product, without confusing either
02.
Operationally heavy tasks (inspection, contracts, payment) on a phone screen
03.
Trust-critical moments that had to stay transparent without slowing conversion
WHAT DID I DECIDE AND WHY?
DECISION 01
Two role-based journeys
THE PROBLEM . Rent a car” and “lease your car” in one app risked confusing both audiences from the first screen.
MY DECISION . Split navigation into two journeys: “I want to rent” vs. “I want to list my car”, with content, forms, and empty states tailored per role.
WHY IT WORKED . Reduced cognitive load and made the platform understandable from the first interaction. Splitting early beats compromising one interface.
DECISION 02
Contract before payment
THE PROBLEM . Terms, fees, and liability hid behind the pay button, exactly where trust-sensitive users abandon.
MY DECISION . Full contract preview with readable term summaries and e-signature gated before payment; rules, restrictions, and total costs visible upfront.
WHY IT WORKED . Trust first, payment second: visible terms reduced abandoned checkouts and set expectations before commitment.
DECISION 03
Hotspot damage inspection
THE PROBLEM . Damage disputes are where peer-to-peer rental trust collapses; word against word, no shared record.
MY DECISION . Photo upload and hotspot annotations on a vehicle silhouette, timestamped and immutable, built for one-hand mobile use. Pre-existing damage visible to renters before acceptance.
WHY IT WORKED . A shared, trustworthy record of every handover; ambiguity removed exactly where accountability matters most.
DECISION 04
Frictionless checkout with visible rules
THE PROBLEM . Reducing friction usually means hiding costs and restrictions; which destroys the trust this product depends on.
MY DECISION . Upfront pricing and fees, card as the default method, transfer and Bitcoin behind a “more methods” affordance, real-time status banners for every state.
WHY IT WORKED . Completion improved while rules, costs, and next steps stayed fully visible.
WHAT HAPPENED?
4 → 1
4 PROCESSES, 1 FLOW
Contract, inspection, payment, and booking; previously separate, paper-heavy steps, unified in one mobile journey.
0
PAPER DOCUMENTS
E-signed contracts, photo-based inspection records, and digital receipts replaced every physical document.
2
USER GROUPS, 1 APP
Renters and owners, with conflicting priorities, served by role-based journeys instead of two products.
100%
TERMS BEFORE PAYMENT
Contract preview, fees, and restrictions always visible before the pay button.
WHAT I LEARNED?
Trust is a designable property: showing contracts, costs, and damage history before commitment converts better than hiding friction. With two conflicting user groups, split the journeys early instead of compromising one interface.
WHAT I'D IMPROVE NEXT?
OWNER ANALYTICS FOR PICING DECISIONS
PROACTIVE FRAUD & RISK SIGNALS
A DISPUTE RESOLUTION WORKSPACE CONNECTING INSPECTION RECORDS & COMMUNICATION
SAVED SEARCH & ALERTS
PROCESS DEEP DIVE
The decisions above rest on a lot of groundwork. If you want the full research and system detail, it's all here.
RESEARCH
Stakeholders had a vision; design needed decisions that reduce drop-offs and support scale.
The information architecture was built around the core entities of the rental ecosystem: users, vehicles, listings, bookings, contracts, inspections, payments, driver jobs; enabling role-based access on a scalable foundation.
Bookings flow through five states: requested → confirmed → active → returned → closed.
