After an Uber or Ola ride, the app asks you to rate your driver. Simple enough. But when should that prompt appear?
Ask too soon, and users hesitate. Some worry the driver might instantly receive a notification, drawing attention to them and the location they’ve just been dropped at.
Ask too late, and memory of the quality of the ride fades.
That 3-star rating given two days later; was it accurate? Or a diluted version of a good 4? Or perhaps an generous recollection of what should have been a terrible 2?
Product teams know this. The further feedback gets from the experience, the less reliable it becomes.
Yet the user’s sense of safety matters too. Timing, it turns out, is a design problem with no clean answer.
Then there’s also another subtler issue that fewer apps address.
Sometimes I give a driver 5 stars, and genuinely mean it. But I still have a small suggestion to offer. Perhaps the music was a bit loud, or the AC was on full blast in winter. Or a lesser followed driving tip. Nothing worth docking a star for, but worth mentioning if it helps the driver improve.
Most apps don’t allow for this. A 5-star rating is treated as “flawless,” which is rare if not impossible.
The design assumes ratings and feedback are the same thing. They’re not.
A rating is a judgement. Feedback is a conversation.
What if 5-star ratings included an optional prompt: “Anything that could be even better?” Framed as helping the driver, not penalizing them.
What if apps offered a “reflection” prompt 24 hours later, clearly marked as delayed, for users who weren’t ready to respond immediately?
These aren’t radical redesigns. They’re small shifts that acknowledge a basic truth: users want to be honest, but they also want to be fair.
Good feedback design makes room for both.
Food for thought. 😉