Human-Centred Design
From Manual Approval to Automatic Booking: A Human-Centred Design Decision
How understanding commuter behaviour changed the Commute Matcher booking flow.
One of the first booking flows I designed for Commute Matcher required drivers to manually approve or reject every passenger request.
The original booking flow
Driver uploads a route
Passenger finds a matching route
Passenger requests a seat
Driver approves or rejects the request
Booking is confirmed
At first, this appeared logical.
Many transport platforms require drivers to accept ride requests, so I naturally considered a similar workflow.
But Commute Matcher is not a traditional ride-hailing platform.
Its drivers are not full-time commercial drivers waiting online for requests. They are regular commuters travelling to work and offering available seats to verified passengers heading in the same direction.
A driver may upload a route the night before, prepare for work early in the morning, begin driving, or simply not check the platform immediately.
Should a passenger be kept waiting for approval when the driver has already published the route, selected a departure time, and declared the number of available seats?
I concluded that uploading a route already communicates readiness to accept eligible passengers.
The published route therefore serves as a form of advance consent.
The revised booking flow
Driver uploads a route and specifies available seats
Verified passenger finds a matching route
System checks route compatibility and seat availability
Seat is booked automatically
Driver receives a booking notification
The main advantage of this design is that passengers are not left waiting for a driver who may be busy, preparing for work, or already on the road.
The trade-offs behind automatic booking
Removing manual approval means the system must take greater responsibility for protecting both drivers and passengers.
- Only verified passengers should be allowed to book.
- Seat availability must update immediately.
- The system must prevent overbooking.
- Drivers must be able to close a route when they no longer want additional passengers.
- Cancellations must follow clear rules.
- Drivers must receive immediate booking notifications.
Automatic booking should not mean removing driver control.
The driver still decides the route, departure time, number of available seats, and when the route stops accepting bookings. The system only removes the need to repeat a decision the driver has already made by publishing the route.
How the design evolved
Before
The driver must approve every passenger request.
After
Publishing a route with available seats signals the driver's readiness and advance consent to accept verified matching passengers.
What I learned
The broader lesson for me was not simply that automatic booking is better than manual approval.
User flows should be designed around the real operating context of users, rather than copied from products that only appear similar.
A workflow may look logical on a diagram and still fail to reflect how people behave in practice.
Sometimes, human-centred design is not about adding another feature.
Sometimes, it is about removing unnecessary friction while introducing the right safeguards.