They’re the Car Next Door. But is the app experience toast or roast-worthy?

You’ve heard of Turo. Now there’s an Aussie Airbnb for cars. But does the app’s UX design stack up?

Like many homeowners, my husband and I thought about renting out our spare room when we moved into our first home together. But really, who wants to get caught making a 1 am snack in the kitchen by a stranger? Not me, I can blow my daily calorie allocation in private thanks.

But you know which asset I wouldn’t mind making a quick buck renting out? My car!

Enter: Car Next Door. This homegrown startup burst onto the scene back in 2012 and brought Airbnb for cars to Australia. They’re an online peer-to-peer car sharing platform. You probably heard about them back around 2018 when they got a massive $6.2 million injection from Hyundai.

The global pandemic kind of stole their thunder after that, but if you Google “Aussie startups to watch in 2021”, they still make the list. I got curious so I downloaded the app and gave it a squiz. To be honest, I had high expectations. I wanted to be blown away by an innovative design. The reality? The experience was…just acceptable. It felt like it was unfinished. Things got a little janky in the user flow, and some elements were downright confusing. Still, I managed to achieve my goal — successfully book a car. Yay. Then things got ugly really quickly.

Grab a glass of water, it’s about to get roasty in here.

The Good

The world is going through a dark moment in history. So let’s start with the positives, shall we?

• Typically when exploring a new app I’ll deny all permission requests. Prove your worth first, then I’ll give you access. However I think this is the first time I’ve approved an app straight away. The body text tells me why the app needs to use bluetooth and it’s a legitimate reason, none of this “to keep you in the loop” rubbish. I appreciate it.

Car Next Door’s app homepage.

• The app home screen is the Search tab. The design is clean and minimalist, and there’s a nice toggle button to switch between list and map view.
• Speaking of nice toggle buttons, there’s another one in the app settings to turn on Dark mode. It’s a nice little addition to give users more control over their experience.

The visual design throughout is minimalist and modern.

• The individual car profile screens are set up very nicely. Related elements are grouped together neatly inside containers and there’s plenty of white space. A frozen panel follows you up and down the page so you can always see the hire rates and booking button. There’s a photo gallery to swipe through, and a great calendar feature to indicate car availability.
• If you do book a trip, you’ll see a neat confirmation screen featuring a beautiful cost breakdown and helpful tooltips. On the pre-confirmation screen, you’ll also find a handy estimate distance cost calculator which provides a more accurate estimate of your total costs.
• Shout out to whoever created the app’s passive onboarding flow. Now there’s a great example of UX best practices. It’s five screens long with brief instructions and is supported by nice illustrations throughout.

The Bad

Unfortunately, it’s time to talk about the bad stuff.

• In this app, the toasts (small system notifications) float across the top of the screen, blocking other elements until you send it away. It’s annoying and that’s exactly why we put toasts down the bottom and out of the way. I’m also not sure why there’s a button there. Why do I need to interact with it?
• For some reason, one of the app tabs is called Menu. But I have no idea why it’s called that. I can view my payment details, notification preferences, FAQs…everything you’d expect to find in an Account tab or Settings tab. They probably should’ve stuck with convention here.

Did I accidentally sign up for the military?

• If you look for a car to book and open a car preview box, you can’t just tap anywhere to close it, you’ll have to use the X button. Also I could barely see the map behind the preview box but I’m using an iPhone 12 mini so that could be on me.
• Let’s say you pick a car and book it. It’s a tad tricky to select a date, but just keep tapping and you’ll get there. There’s a scrolling dial tool to select the time, but why on earth is it in 24 hour time? Did I accidentally sign up for the military? Make it easy for users and use 12 hour time. Don’t make users do mental maths.
• If you’re a new user, you’ll keep getting prompted to finish setting up. Word of warning, the ID scanning process is unusual. There’s a few hoops, like uploading photos of my drivers’ license and taking a video selfie, so points for thorough testing. Unfortunately, it doesn’t automatically fill in my license details so I have to type it all in again. Whenever you can, make the signing up process easier and faster for users. Auto-fill is a users’ best friend.

The Ugly

I reserve this word for UX designs that really earn it, like Netflix’s autoplay feature. The number of times I’ve been scared by blasting audio is ridiculous. But I’m saying it now. The way that this app uses its in-app messaging feature is what killed the whole experience for me. So, what went wrong?

• Firstly, it’s a bit odd to find the Support feature tucked away in your inbox next to your regular in-app messages. Odd, but I guess it could make sense. Points for creativity.
• This is where the experience gets janky. If the user typed a long and complicated message to start the chat, I imagine some users would be mighty annoyed to see that message disappear upon opening the chat screen. Where did all that hard work go? I was so surprised I even quit and reopened the app a few times to double-check. Nope. That first message was still gone.

I couldn’t find a reply button anywhere!

• And here it all starts falling apart. When a trip is confirmed, you’ll find a new message from the car owner waiting for you in your app inbox. But you won’t be able to reply to their message in the chat. Seriously, I searched for a reply button. Also if it’s your first trip you’ll see the same onboarding screens you saw at the start. Just don’t tap on them, because that’ll send you out of the app and into the App Store for some reason?
• You’ll also see your trip in the Trips tab. There are several options including changing or cancelling your trip, and you can contact the owner. The contact screen has general instructions and gives you three options to get in contact; SMS, email or calling. But where’s the option to use the in-built messaging function? It’s like the app doesn’t want me to use the message function properly. I can’t imagine why the app designers would build an in-app messaging function, then encourage users to conduct all their communication outside of the app.

So, what have we learnt?

Car sharing is the next revolution to join the sharing economy in Australia. We’ll just skim over the failed bike sharing incident in Sydney for now. This app should have been as innovative as fellow industry disrupters like Airbnb, but instead it feels like a prototype. Looking at the app’s version history on the App Store, it appears that this feeling isn’t misplaced and that the app might simply be too young. So unfortunately, this app UX design review is officially a roast. The silver lining? There’s always room for improvement. And I’ve just given the Car Next Door developer team about six months worth of work to iterate on.

Dear, Car Next Door team — if you’re ever looking for bright minds to join the team, hit me up! 🙋‍♀️

Review written about the Car Next Door app as at August 2021.