Zipcar needs community centered design, not just user centered design
We have been Zipcar fans since we first signed up in 2007. To say that we liked the service, is an understatement. I told more than one person that this was the future of car ownership – that people would migrate to this model as they had moved from ownership to leasing. And we mentioned them a few times in various posts.
Now I am being forced to eat my words, as I enjoy Zipcar less and less. It seems I am not alone, judging by these comments on getsatisfaction and these epinions comments and these on YELP for NYC. And of course, to keep myself honest in realtime, there is this:
myzuk EPIC Zipcar fail! My reservation is starting an hour late because some idiot can’t get from 22nd & L to 19th & M on a grid system? Bullshit.18 minutes ago from web
To be fair, plenty of people love Zipcar. They still have good experiences and they like the idea, as I do, of not owning a car and being part of something that seems to be better for the environment, since most of the city folk dont need our cars waiting around for us all the time, do we?
I still think this is a great idea, but why is it going wrong? And what can ZipCar do to fix it?
Lets start by aligning interests (hint fines dont really align interests)
Zipcar wants people to do a few things:
1. fill up the car with gas
2. keep it clean
3. return on time
There are some other things like reporting demage etc, but lets start with these.
Today, most people seem to get the filling up with gas part right.
The big issues seems to be – the cars seem to get dirtier each time we use them. And there seem to be more problems with people returning late.
The current approach are fines. Ok, I understand. That seems like this would align interests – you are late, so you get fined. But what happens to the person who is delayed an hour? (see above tweet).
This is a community, so why not make use of non-financial currencies? They work in most communities.
Why not show me a profile with their ratings?
How many times have they been late?
Did someone report the car dirty after they used it?
In this way, we could weed out the people who dont care. I’m betting it would be a lot more effective for Zipcar, in the long term. In the short term, they would likely see behaviors adjust. People would not rent close to BAD people. Or they wouldnt rent the cars after them. Maybe their rates go up to cover cleaning and “buffer time”.
However in the long run, Zipcar might not see their early, loyal users defect to competitors and they’d likely reinforce the idea that this is not a car rental company but a group of people sharing cars. And I think that will likely give them a huge ecoomic advantage in terms of positive word of mouth and lower maintenance costs, etc. Let the BAD people rent and pay more.
Community Centered Design vs User Centered Design
Zipcar has great tools. The experience of finding and booking a car could hardly be easier. And if you need to update on the go, the mobile apps are good too. Their user centered  design is excellent.
But what about the community centered design?
In a recent conversation with Richard White of uservoice.com (he is a happy Zipcar user, I should add), Â he expanded on the idea of community centered design – Â the design that improves the experience for the community. Â Community design is about designing incentives to get the community to behave a certain way. Â For example, in Richard’s case they use vote limits to force people to make a choice between options when voting for differnet ideas on uservoice. The vote limiting means you have to make choices – you cant support everything. So it makes it easier to see what is important. The end result is that the community benefits overall, even if the individual user might complain that they wanted more votes.
Zipcar can we try a little community centered design? Please.
I’m betting if you get this right, you wont have to go head to head with Hertz Connect, since you’ll have a real community helping you out and they’ll be well, just a rental car company with their traditional, more expensive cost structure. We can help you. Just let us.
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