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User Groups for sporadic ride:
College Students: * Both undergraduate and graduate students who are enrolled in a university: *
A lot of college students do not have a car and are usually more willing to travel with strangers. In addition students usually don't have too much income, which means that they prefer cheap ways of traveling. College students might use the service to:
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College students tend to be fairly tech savvy nowadays. Probably own some kind of smart phone (Iphone and/or android).
Young Professionals: People who finished their education recently and are now working:
Young professionals, especially the ones that live in big cities (New York, Boston, Chicago, etc) do not own their own car. In addition, they might have moved to a new City away from their friends. Therefore, they can use the service to get rides to visit their old friends, while meeting new people at the same time. Most of the users in this group will also be fairly tech savvy.
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Parents of children and teenagers: Parents might want to try to set up some car pooling system with other parents that live nearby in order to drive their kids to school.
User Interviews
Andrew P.
Details:
- Senior in Course 1
- From Wisconsin
- Car Owner
Andrew has a car at MIT. Every summer Andy has to drive his car back home. It is a 20 hour drive and he mentioned how he always has trouble finding other people to drive with. He has tried using the ride board that is in the 2nd floor of the student center, but without much success. Very few people use it and it is not very convenient because you have to go to the student center in order to look for rides.
Caroline M.
Details:
- Doctor who lives in Westwood, but works in Brookline
- Mother of two children
- Car owner
Caroline lives in the suburbs but works in the city. She spends up to two hours every work day commuting. Driving through traffic is often stressful and would prefer to take turns driving with another person. Furthermore, with the price of gas rising, it is getting difficult to commute every day. However, she does not personally know anyone who has a similar commute schedule or commute route. She does not know of a way to find people who she could carpool with and she believes that her preferences are so specific that it would be very difficult to find what she wants by looking through listings.
Ariel T.
Details:
- 24 years old
- Graduated from Harvard 2 years ago
- Working at a startup in Cambridge
- Lives in Central Square.
- Married :)
Ariel would not go alone with a male driver who she didn’t know. She’d be more open with a female driver, or if she had friends with her. Usually to find rides, She just contacts a lot of friends- she emails out to Harvard 2010 list or church list to see if anyone is interested. She would want to know how much the person wanted for gas beforehand. She thinks it would be more useful and she would feel safer if there were references on the driver (like a phone number or email). She would prefer to have popular departing cities and destinations and to maybe do it by season. She thinks it would be cool to set a default city and that it would be useful to have a newsfeed to advertise rides. She would like the ability to subscribe to destinations that she wants. Also, she would like to see how many empty seats are available for each ride. She also thinks it would be nice if the site had a message system.