Fuel Hedging
for Everyday People
TankWallet was an early startup that wanted to bring fuel hedging into the consumer and SMB space. As the only non-engineering member, I drove product, design, marketing and user research.
I was a founding member of the team. Being the only one with product and design background, I led research, design, product management, marketing, and customers support.
I directed an in house animator, a freelance marketing writer, three freelance brand designers, and two voice actresses.
I also acted as a Product Manager, Market Researcher, and Product Marketer.
I improved the user experience significantly by iterating the designs based on quantatative and qualitative data.
After researching the consumer and business facing transportations and fuel vendors, we decided to target the on-demand drivers community. Ride hailing and on-demand delivery combined was a super fast growing industry. To break down, the following four traits of on-demand drivers beat the other possible options.
A regular full time driver spends $500-$700 a month
Due to the need of using an app to do their job, they are relatively tech savvy.
We reach them by taking rides, talking to food delivery drivers during lunch hour at popular restaurants, go to their social gatherings, and etc.
Our plan was to launch and iterate. A good size of user base is important to support this product development methodology.
I participated in two big social gatherings of on-demand drivers. I also go to gas stations regularly to promote, test and observe our product.
I talked to over 200 on-demand drivers I received service from. I also performed more formal scripted user interviews on the streets as well as in house.
I sourced, recruited and performed over 100 user testings through out the design iterations.
This is the hands down the hardest part of this project. Hedging is such an advanced concept which is not saving money or making money but removing risk. In real world, hedging can involve buying futures which is another foreign concept for many users. We went through many rounds of metaphors and ended up using the concept of locking in gas price.
Hedging equals locking gas prices. A user can lock in today’s gas prices for future months.
We reimbursed users for what they paid at the pump so that pump prices fluctuation no longer mattered to them.
A voucher is the order confirmation of a user’s price locking activity.
As an app from a non name developer, we need to gain user’s interest and trust within the first five minutes before they put down their phone. The NUX (New User Experience) is designed to achieve two things within the first five minutes.
Tailoring first content based on user interest led to drastic drop offs in NUX.
Initially, we ask for users' preferred fuel grade, and search their go-to stations in the NUX. However data tells us it's best to let users explore and not being "too smart".
After three rounds of iterations on our live product, the NUX metric of success was improved by 600%. In person user interviews also back up this metric with more qualitative information.
Nothing tells better how it works than letting users try it out themselves.
Users wouldn't spend money on an app that they aren't familiar with. In order to help users understand how the translated hedging work, I petitioned to give a free gallon to let users explore the workflow.
We received great ratings ~4.5 stars on both the Google Play and App Store. The new user funnel looked great. Users were generally excited about the idea of locking in gas price.
Most users only lock in gas prices for the next 1-2 months. The financial stability benefit short-term hedging can bring is trivial at an on-demand driver's fuel consumption scale.
