Product · Mobile · 2018

Journey

A car-sharing insurance app that flipped a 100-year-old industry default. Cover the driver, not the car — so lending your car to a friend doesn't quietly raise your own premium.

Four Journey app screens shown in perspective
Role
Lead designer, product strategy, UI/UX, visual, interaction
Team
2 designers, founders, and engineers
Stage
Shipped to TestFlight · early-stage startup
01 — The pain

Lending a car shouldn't punish you for it.

Talk to anyone who lets a friend, parent, or caregiver drive their car and you'll hear the same small dread: "what happens if they ding it?" The mechanics underneath that dread are uglier than most owners realize.

When someone else drives your car and causes a claim, your premium goes up. Not theirs — yours. The insurance industry built its model around the vehicle, not the person at the wheel.

The founders had lived this personally — a family member crashed a borrowed car, the owner's rate jumped, the friendship strained. They wanted to design a product where lending didn't have a tax.

02 — The concept shift

Make insurance follow the driver.

The whole product hinges on a one-sentence reframe — and everything downstream (pricing, UI, the two-sided flow, even the brand) comes out of it.

Industry default
Insurance follows the car

When a friend borrows your car and gets into a fender bender, your premium goes up. Quietly. You did nothing.

Journey
Insurance follows the driver

The borrower buys hourly coverage based on their own driving history. Your premium stays where it was. Your car stays yours.

03 — Two-sided product

One concept, two distinct flows.

Owner and Borrower aren't variants of the same screen — they need different mental models, different controls, different first impressions. I designed each as a self-contained experience that handed off cleanly at the moment of borrowing.

Owner Lends the car
  • Add cars to MyGarage with photos + plates
  • Pick who can borrow, with one tap
  • See where the car is in real time while it's out
  • Keep their own premium private — borrowers never see it
Borrower Drives the car
  • Browse available cars in friends' garages
  • Buy hourly insurance — priced from their own driving record
  • See the live Journey Insurance Card during the trip
  • Return the car; coverage ends; nothing carries over to the owner
04 — Key moments

A few of the interactions I cared about most.

Most of the work was the connective tissue, but a handful of moments carried the product's promise. These are the ones I'd show on a wall.

Driver-based insurance was a clean idea then. Years later, I'm still proud of how this one read.

— Manjia Zhao