Planning Driver and Rider Research for an Uber Event-Pickup Feature Launch
Company: Intuit
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Uber plans to launch a feature that makes it smoother for drivers to pick up riders leaving large events such as concerts and sports games. You have been asked to carry out the customer research for this launch. Walk through how you would run the research and how you would prepare the report that presents its findings.
```hint Work back from the decisions
Before choosing methods, list what the launch team must decide using your report, then match each open question to the cheapest research that can answer it. Remember that a pickup at a venue looks different to the driver, the rider and the venue.
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### Clarifying Questions
- How far along is the feature: is the problem still open, or is there already a concept, such as a dedicated pickup area, that the research should test?
- Who will read the report and what will they decide with it: whether to build, what goes into the first version, or which events and cities to launch in?
- Which cities and event types are in scope, and how much time does the research have?
- Should the research cover riders and venue operators as well as drivers?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- Research goals tied to the specific decisions the launch team must make.
- Who is studied (drivers, riders, venue and city partners), how they are recruited, and how bias in the sample is avoided.
- A mix of methods, combining Uber's own trip and support data with interviews and observation at real events, with a reason for each.
- How findings are synthesized and prioritized into recommendations and launch success metrics.
- A report structure that leads with the recommendation and states its limitations and open questions.
### Follow-up Questions
- Drivers want to stay out of the traffic around the venue, while riders want the shortest walk. How would your report handle that conflict?
- Interviews point to one main problem, but the trip data points to another. How do you decide which to believe?
- How would you design the pilot that tests whether the report's recommendations worked?
Overview: A product manager question on running customer research for an Uber feature that streamlines driver pickups at concerts, games and other large events, and preparing the resulting report. It tests research planning across drivers, riders and venues, use of trip data, synthesis of findings, and turning them into launch recommendations.