Drop App

PROCESS

Before I Designed Anything

DROP was my first time designing a transport app from scratch. Rather than guessing, I started by studying how ride-hailing products work looking at the booking flow, the driver flow, live tracking, payment, onboarding, and ratings. Not to copy them, but to understand the pattern well enough to make DROP work for its specific context.

What I found during that research confirmed the product direction: none of the apps I studied had built properly for keke drivers. They all assumed the driver had a car. DROP had a real opportunity to own that space.

How I broke the product down

I separated the product into three user types with completely different needs and mapped out what each one required before designing a single screen.

Passenger books rides, schedules in advance, tracks driver, pays, and rates.

Driver registers, gets verified, goes online, accepts trips, earns money.

Admin approves drivers, monitors the platform, manages pricing, resolves disputes.

The booking flow

The booking flow was one of the parts I spent the most time understanding. I needed to figure out the exact steps a passenger goes through from opening the app to being inside a vehicle and at the same time, what happens on the driver's side when that request comes in. Getting both sides to connect correctly was the core design challenge of the passenger and driver apps.

Passenger side:Enter pickup → Enter destination → Choose ride type (Keke or Car) → See fare → Confirm → Driver matched → Live tracking → Trip completed → Rate driver.

Driver side:Go online → Receive request → Accept or decline → Navigate to passenger → Start trip → Complete trip → Earnings updated.

Building the System

Before designing screens I established the visual language. The goal was a brand that felt modern and trustworthy without looking like a copy of an existing ride-hailing app.

Primary colour: Deep Green.Communicates trust, safety, and movement without referencing any competitor directly.

  Accent: Orange/Gold.Used for primary actions and key highlights. Warm, energetic, and visible on dark and light backgrounds.

Background: White.Keeps the interface clean and the map readable critical for a transport app where location is always in view.

Typography: Inter and Poppins.Both are clean, modern, and highly legible at small sizes on mobile screens.

The Solution

Four surfaces. Each designed for a specific user and a specific job to be done.

01 Passenger App

The passenger experience needed to be fast. The typical DROP user is a professional with somewhere to be. Every screen needed to move them forward with as little friction as possible.

Booking is designed as a straight line.Enter pickup, enter destination, choose ride type, confirm. No unnecessary steps, no decisions that can wait until later.

Keke and private car are offered as separate options on the same screen.The passenger chooses based on preference, price, and availability all visible before they confirm.

Live tracking keeps the passenger informed after booking.They can see the driver moving toward them in real time removing the anxiety of not knowing how long to wait.

The rating screen appears immediately after the trip ends.One tap to rate, optional comment. Fast to complete, but it builds the accountability layer that makes the platform trustworthy over time.

02 Driver App

The driver experience was more complex than the passenger side. A driver cannot simply sign up and start accepting rides they must go through a full verification process first. This protects passengers and builds trust in the platform

Driver onboarding is a dedicated flow separate from passenger onboarding.Different requirements, different screens, different review process. Mixing the two would have created confusion and security gaps.

The criminal history questionnaire is part of onboarding.This is a deliberate safety feature it creates a formal record and signals to drivers that the platform takes safety seriously.

After approval, the driver's home screen focuses on one thing: going online.A clear toggle, their daily earnings, and incoming trip requests. No complexity until they are ready for it.

Trip acceptance shows the destination before the driver commits.This respects the driver's time and reduces trip cancellations a common problem on ride-hailing platforms.

03 Admin Dashboard

The admin dashboard was the surface I had to figure out from scratch. I had not designed a transport admin before, so I researched how similar platforms structure their control center and broke down exactly what the business needed to manage then built the dashboard around those real jobs.

Driver approvals are the most time-sensitive admin task.The dashboard surfaces pending applications prominently not buried in a submenu so the team can review and approve drivers quickly and keep supply growing.

Live ride monitoring gives the admin real-time visibility.They can see active trips on a map, which drivers are online, and flag anything that looks wrong without waiting for a report.

The dashboard was designed to scale.As DROP expands into courier delivery, medical transport, and school runs, new modules can be added to the existing sidebar structure without rebuilding the layout.

What I Learned

DROP was the project that taught me how to understand a new type of product from the ground up. I had never designed a transport app before. Instead of pretending I already knew how it worked, I took time to research, map out the flows, and understand both sides of the marketplace the passenger and the driver before I designed anything.

The thing I am most proud of on this project is not a specific screen. It is the fact that I understood what the client was building well enough to make design decisions that served the product, not just the brief. Recognizing that keke needed to be a first-class option not an afterthought came from actually understanding the Nigerian transport context, not from copying another app.