DriveScore Automotive App
DriveScore was built for users to prove and improve their driving and save money on things like car insurance. By putting people in control of data collected as they drive they can make smarter choices. Our beautiful, insightful and award winning private app works to make driving a safer, cleaner, fairer experience for all.
Live Piece, June 2022 – PresentABOUT DriveScore
DriveScore's strategy is to disrupt the car insurance price comparison space by using a proprietary telematics data asset - a user's DriveScore, and provide it to insurers in order to get the user discounted car insurance prices. In 2021 we launched both iOS and Android apps that users can download onto their phones to generate their DriveScore. Users can view their driving behaviour via the app and also have control over the data shared. No need for a black box being fitted to a users vehicle, their phone captures it all.
When a user downloads DriveScore, every trip they complete is recorded whether they drive it or not. They can reclassify these trips, but, after a few weeks the algorithm will automatically do this for them. After completing 150 miles they get a DriveScore, which shows how good a driver they are. The trip details feature gives a detailed analysis of every trip completed, giving a user rich insights including average speed, distance travelled and importantly how good they are in five different dimensions of driving: hard braking, harsh acceleration, harsh cornering, phone distraction and speeding.
All of these elements of the driving style come together in the DriveScore, and users can monitor how each of the sub-dimensions make up their individual score. Through research, we were able to identify that users wanted a service where all their driving needs were in one place, so this led us to develop the Car Hub feature. This feature allows users to share details of their vehicle with us. We then pull data together on the vehicle showing when their tax is due, their MOT expires and their insurance renewal date.
Although DriveScore's focus is primarily insurance, we also wanted to identify other monetisation opportunities and become an automotive marketplace. Offers from DriveScore, collects a wide range of offers to help users save money on their car services and accessories. With automotive AI becoming increasingly popular, we plan to surface personalised information to a user based on the current health and age of their vehicle combined with their driving score. With this data we will be able to recommend maintenance and servicing options as well as linking a user to their nearest garage or fuel station, via location maps.
Research & Testing
When designing DriveScore user experience, we focus our product direction on three main personas:
James 'Instant Saver'
James is a student, on a relatively low income. His parents helped him buy his first car, but it's his responsibility to maintain the running costs. Although he has only recently passed his test and is a young driver, he considers himself a good driver, and knows that driving well and maintaining a good score will help lower his insurance cost. His car gives him independence, and he mainly uses it for recreational purposes to visit friends and family. James is interested in the driving insights, where he can dive deeper into the data and see interesting patterns and trends in his driving behaviour over time. James wants to lower his running costs and get a good deal on car insurance.
Joanne 'Constant Improver'
Joanne drives often, as a mobile hairdresser Joanne uses her car to visit clients at their homes. She is interested in monitoring her driving behaviour and likes watching her score go up, she is motivated by constant improvement. Due to her low income she is keen to keep running costs to a minimum, and is interested in seeing how much she spends on things like fuel. She is also environmentally conscious and wants to play her part by driving more sustainably, or in the future changing her car to an EV. Joanne is a busy mum with two children and so is looking for a product where she can get a quick insurance quote. She is not as auto savvy and she would like to be and wants an app that covers all her motoring needs in one place.
Jeff 'Deal Driver'
Jeff works part time and owns two vehicles, his collectible car and his every day vehicle. He is price sensitive, and uses comparison sites to make sure he is getting the best deal on his car insurance. He's been driving for many years and considers himself a good driver, and so is motivated by seeing he has a good driving score. He also recognises that over the years he has picked up a few bad driving habits that he wants to improve. He likes to have control over his finances and save for his retirement. He likes to be notified of any changes to his score, and needs servicing and maintenance reminders. Jeff likes to be in control of his finances and wants to know how his driving score is saving him money on his car insurance.
Having spoken to hundreds of our users, through both surveys and moderated user interviews we could clearly identify a few trends. Users often owned more than one vehicle, they used comparison websites to search for the best deal, and would often negotiate a better deal with their existing provider. Road safety was a top priority for most drivers with 80% of participants wanting safer roads for both themselves and their children. Many of the DriveScore users interviewed were focused on their driving score and subscores. They were interested in constant improvement, and being able to dive deeper into their driving insights and compare their driving to others. Learn article and How to videos, were features users asked for alongside an interest in how their driving was impacting the environment. This led us to launch insights around fuel efficiency. When DriveScore users give us the details of their car, we can work out both the approximate cost of the fuel for any given trip and their eco-impact for that trip. Out of the participants interviewed 75% were mindful of the environmental impact of their driving, and wanted the DriveScore product to go further in educating them on how to improve.
Challenges and solutions
Keeping users engaged
As a small team and startup it's important to utilise everyone in the team when coming up with new ideas and solutions. From our data we know that historically users sign up to DriveScore and unlock their driving score within the first 11 days. When they sign up its likely users are in their renewal window and in the market for insurance. However with insurance being a yearly purchase, we needed to find other engaging features that would increase retention in the product over a 12 month period, and get those users returning. One of our first ideas was the introduction of what we call a universal card. This card, which primarily sits on the dashboard, updates the user on the next available action. These cards are flexible and can fit within different pages of the app. These dismissible cards show users personalised content relevant to their status. For example if they are in their renewal window, we tell them this and guide them to the quote journey.
I ran an engagement workshop with the team around the problem statement of 'How might we increase user engagement on DriveScore?'. Here we explored many ideas around themes, such as competition and comparison to other drivers, getting achievements and awards for good driving and being able to see a timeline of how a user's score is changing over time. The workshop consisted of a crazy 8's ideation, and voting session where Leaderboard became our top voted option to continue exploring.
Through research and testing we were able to identify that users are interested in both their score and the individual subscores. They naturally asked questions such as, what's a good score, how does my score compare, or can I see other people's scores in my area or of a similar make or model? We know that location and movement tracking becomes super motivating when users can share and compare. Strava, Peloton, and many other apps already put this at the heart of their experiences, and so users are already used to engaging in this way. DriveScore leaderboards allows users, with their permission, to see how they rank against friends and family. Users can see leaderboards for their area, who they are, or for their vehicle type. We launched a very lightweight MVP, where users could create a board and invite other members to join. We descopped a lot of the original feature, removing the option for users to create multiple boards or set up a user profile page, so you could compare your driving data of the subscores to another member. We gained very positive traction in the first few weeks, with hundreds of leaderboards created daily. Unfortunately most leaderboards only consisted of an average of 2 people per board, and due to descopping too much of the original feature, users quickly lost interest. We didn't have enough positive data to suggest that this feature would increase our retention problem, and so this led us to park any further development for the time being and explore other options around insights.
The right info at the right time
A lot of experimentation around how and when to engage with a user was tested through CRM, via email and push notifications, but how we market DriveScore to the user has to transcend within the product also. Another concept we explored was timelines. How might we use a timeline approach to keep users engaged in the product. Can we show data on a user's score over time? How can we use timelines to explain the difference between a 14 day score vs a 365 day score? We soon started to realise the importance of showing a user personalised insights. When a user returns to the product, we want to show them something of value, interesting content about changes in their driving behaviour. Strategically and from a business lens, keeping users informed on when is the best time to quote and how much they could save is key and brings us closer to proving product market fit.
DriveScore Brand
Being a relatively small team, we needed a space where all teams across the business had access to DriveScore's brand assets and could successfully self-serve. The brand playbook gives teams access via Notion to all assets, linking directly to dropbox where they can access what they need, with minimal help required by the wider team. The brand playbook, gives clear guidelines on how to use each asset from our logo through to colour pallet and imagery.
Representing DriveScore
As well as designing the product, my role as mission lead involves representing the DriveScore brand and products during external events and awards ceremonies. During the summer of 2023 we showcased the DriveScore product to over 400 business professionals during IMPACT, ClearScores company keynote. A few months later we also won the Gold award for Best Customer App at the Insurance Times, Tech and Innovation awards 2023.
