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Feature concept · Uber

Spot your ride in a crowd

At a busy metro exit, every auto looks the same, and the driver can’t tell which of 200 people booked the ride. I designed two small additions: riders see a real photo of their vehicle, and drivers see a photo of the pickup spot.

Role
Product designer
Type
Self-directed concept
Platform
Uber rider + driver apps
Year
2026
Arriving · 1 min Majestic Metro, main entrance
PIN 4821
Front of a black-and-yellow auto with a “LAVANYA” sign above the windshield and red tassels inside
Look for the front
  • “LAVANYA” sign
  • Red tassels
  • Yellow plate
Manjunath ★ 4.9 · Auto KA 02 9275

The problem

Three black-and-yellow autos parked side by side on a Bengaluru street
Same shape, same colours, same yellow roof. Which one is yours?

“Hard to find a cab” is really two problems. Only one of them is a design problem.

Out of scope

No driver accepts

A supply and pricing problem. Design can’t make more autos appear.

This concept

The ride is here, but nobody can find each other

The auto has arrived, but the rider can’t spot it and the driver can’t spot the rider. This one is a design problem.

01

Everything looks the same

The app shows a generic icon, a colour and a plate number. From 20 metres away, in a row of yellow roofs, none of those help.

02

The driver can’t find you either

A pin in a crowd is just a dot among hundreds of people, and GPS drifts near big buildings.

03

So everyone calls

“Where are you?” calls in a noisy street, sometimes without a shared language, end in waiting or cancelled rides.

The insight

Autos look alike from far away. Up close, every one is different.

Drivers decorate their autos with hand-painted names, stickers, tassels and posters. A generic icon throws all of that away. A real photo keeps it.

The back of an auto with a hand-painted name sign
A hand-painted name on the back
The front of an auto with a name sign and red tassels
A name sign and tassels at the front

The solution

Rider

A real photo of your vehicle

Not an illustration, but the actual auto. The app picks the side you’ll see: the front when it’s coming toward you, the side when it pulls up next to you.

Driver

A photo of the pickup spot

The rider can add one photo of where they’re standing, like a gate, a sign or a shop. It shows the place, never the person.

Driver onboarding

Four sides, kept up to date

Drivers photograph the front, back and both sides once. The app checks the plate in the photos and asks for new ones every few months.

Driver onboarding

Front
Left side
Back
Right side

2 of 4 photos

  • The plate must be readable in the front and back photos, and it’s checked against the registration.
  • New photos every 6 months, or when the rider’s view no longer matches (“Vehicle looked different”).
  • If a driver rents an auto for the day, they snap the four sides at the start of the shift.

The pickup photo, safely

Sending a photo to a stranger is a real worry, especially for women riding alone. These rules come first.

The place, not the person

The camera opens with a frame that says “Show the spot, not yourself”. Faces in the photo are blurred automatically.

Optional and one tap

Nobody wants extra steps in a crowd. Skip it and the ride works exactly as it does today.

Gone after the ride

The photo is only shared with this driver, and it’s deleted when the trip starts.

Reuse popular spots

At busy places like metro exits, the app can suggest photos of the spot that Uber has already checked, so riders don’t have to take one.

Ideas I explored

Dropped

A 3D model built from the four photos

Riders need something they can take in at a glance, not a model to rotate in a crowd. Four photos can’t make an accurate model either, and AI that fills in the gaps can invent details that aren’t really there. It’s also heavy on budget phones and patchy data.

Prior art

A coloured light on the windshield

Uber once tested “Beacon”, a light that glowed in a colour the rider picked. It needs a device in every vehicle, and in India most rides are autos and bikes. A photo needs nothing new in the vehicle.

How I’d measure it

This is a concept, so nothing here has been tested yet. Here is what I’d measure, at crowded spots like Majestic, metro exits, the airport and malls.

01

Time to pickup

From “driver arrived” to “trip started”. This is the time people spend searching for each other.

02

“Where are you?” calls

Calls between rider and driver after the driver arrives.

03

Cancellations at pickup

Rides cancelled after the driver has already arrived.

04

Photo uptake

How many riders add a spot photo, and how often drivers open it.