Beat · Ride-hailing · 2020
Bonuses — moving driver incentives out of a weekly email and into the app
Beat was a ride-hailing app operating across five Latin American markets. To keep cars on the road when demand spiked, the business offered drivers extra earning opportunities — internally we called them Incentives. Complete a streak of trips in a busy area at a busy time, and you earned a bonus on top of your fares.
The problem wasn't the offer. It was the delivery. Drivers could only see their Incentives through an email we sent every Sunday for the week ahead. The thing meant to motivate them lived in an inbox they rarely opened — and the numbers showed it.
The problem
Incentives lived in an email nobody opened
A weekly email is a poor home for something drivers need to act on every day. To check what they could earn, a driver had to leave the app, dig out Sunday's email, and hold the requirements in their head while they drove. Many simply forgot the email existed. The drop-off compounded at every step: fewer drivers saw the Incentives, fewer engaged with them, and fewer requests turned into completed rides.
Research
Five drivers, and a spreadsheet habit
With our local product specialist I ran interviews with five drivers, anchored on one question: how do drivers actually use Incentives in their current form? I mapped the transcripts into an empathy map, then sent a closed-question survey to validate the patterns quantitatively across a wider group.
The same friction surfaced again and again. 73% of drivers had forgotten to check the Incentives email altogether. 56% lost track of an Incentive's requirements partway through the week. Many were keeping their own running tally — in a notebook, a spreadsheet, a notes app — because the app gave them nothing to track against. Drivers weren't unmotivated; they were doing our product's job by hand.
"I forget the requirements halfway through the week"
Nothing in the app reminded drivers what they were working toward, so the goal faded as soon as the email was closed.
"I track my progress on paper"
Drivers built their own tally systems to know how close they were — a clear signal that progress belonged inside the app.
"Switching between email and the app is tedious"
Checking an Incentive meant leaving the tool drivers were already in. The context switch was enough friction to stop them looking.
The bet
A dedicated tab, with progress drivers can see
The hypothesis was simple: if Incentives lived in their own screen inside the driver app — with requirements stated plainly and live progress toward each one — engagement would rise, and more drivers would complete at least one. A competitive scan of other LATAM ride-hailing apps backed the direction; the strongest ones gave drivers a daily view, clear requirements, and visible progress tracking, none of which our email could do.
The Bonuses tab, an Incentive's details, and the map of where it applies — all inside the driver app.
Decisions that shaped it
Where the design earned its keep
Daily view, not weekly — a constraint that improved the UX
I'd designed a full week's view, but in grooming the engineers flagged that the larger payload hurt performance on the low-end phones many drivers used. Switching to a daily view fixed the performance problem and, it turned out, made the screen calmer — one day's Incentives at a time instead of seven.
Make the active Incentive unmistakable
Drivers needed to know at a glance which Incentive was live right now. The active card gets stronger contrast and a prominent time indicator, so the answer to "what counts at this moment?" never requires a second look.
Make the cards feel tappable
Each Incentive opens a details screen, but testing showed drivers didn't realise the cards were interactive. A simple chevron affordance signalled "there's more here" and pulled people into the detail without a tutorial.
A timeline for multiple daily Incentives
With several Incentives in a single day, drivers needed to see the sequence — what's active now, what's coming, what's done. A vertical timeline ordered the day so the cards read as a schedule, not a pile.
Testing & iteration
Guerrilla testing outside the driver center
I ran a round of guerrilla testing with five drivers outside our driver center. All five found the Bonuses feature and understood the requirements — but two sharper gaps showed up: three of five couldn't tell which Incentive was currently active, and three didn't realise the cards were tappable. Those two findings drove the highest-leverage changes between mid- and high-fidelity.
Before and after testing — a more visible active Incentive, a prominent time indicator, a tappable affordance, and a clearer daily timeline.
Outcomes
What a month of data showed
We monitored the feature for a month after launch. Moving Incentives into the app didn't just lift visibility — it changed behaviour. Most drivers checked their Bonuses every day, and the share completing at least one Incentive nearly quadrupled.
What came next
Two more ways to earn
With the MVP proving out, we extended the system. A details screen gave each Incentive room for terms and conditions the business needed, and we added two new Incentive types: a bonus paid per ride, to reward volume, and an earnings goal that paid out once a driver crossed a threshold — nudging them toward longer trips.
Reflection
What shipping it taught me
The biggest lesson wasn't about UI. It was how much the work depended on the relationship with my Product Owner — the two of us were aligned long before anything reached the wider team, and that head start is what let us push back on the temptation to jump straight to solutions. We spent longer in research than felt comfortable, and the empathy work is exactly what surfaced the paper-tally insight the whole design hinged on.
Design QA mattered more here than on most features — the UI was demanding for the dev team, and staying close through the build kept errors out of production. Looking back, the through-line is that this feature succeeded by removing friction drivers had quietly absorbed, not by adding anything flashy. Get the right thing in front of people at the right moment, and they'll do the rest.