Wanda

The core business moves people to medical appointments, pharmacy visits, dialysis treatments and hospital discharges. The rider doesn't reach for a wallet, and the trip has to qualify for coverage before it happens at all. Wanda was a deliberate departure from that model.

What made it viable was that the hard part already existed. MTM/Veyo had the fleet, the driver network, the dispatch system and the routing logistics running at scale for the reimbursed side. Wanda pointed a second, paying demand side at that same infrastructure: a substantially larger market at a low marginal cost, because nobody had to build a transportation network to find out whether the idea worked.

Once the caregiver is paying cash and comparing us to Uber on their phone, price transparency, trust and the speed of a repeat booking stop being nice-to-have UX qualities and start being the things the business runs on.

Most of the people I spoke with weren't familiar with app conventions a younger user never consciously registers — not just specific patterns, but the basic grammar of moving through a mobile interface. Anything requiring a user to hold several decisions in their head at once, recognize an unlabeled icon, or understand that a screen scrolls was going to fail. That converted directly into hard design constraints: larger type, high-contrast and unambiguous calls to action, and a single action per screen.

A caregiver managing both parents doesn't have one rider to arrange trips for; they have two, with different mobility needs, medications and doctors. The original design let a caregiver sign up on a rider's behalf — which technically covered it, but meant a separate account per person, and logging out of Mom's account to book something for Dad.

The emotional low points in the journey maps weren't about wait times or price. They were about a ride arriving that couldn't do the job. The fear underneath it, especially for caregivers, was of a loved one stranded or wandering.

Wanda started out designed for the person in the car. Caregiver access existed as a permission: you could sign up on someone's behalf, and the product would tolerate it. If the caregiver is usually the one booking, and often manages multiple riders, treating them as a delegated edge case guarantees the primary workflow is the unsupported one.

Both doors stayed open, deliberately. A senior comfortable with a phone can hold their own account and book their own rides; nothing about the caregiver model forces them into dependence they didn't ask for. What changed is that the caregiver path became a designed experience rather than a tolerated one.

Vehicle type, mobility assistance, medical considerations like an oxygen tank, level of service at each end of the trip. It's the longest interaction in the product, and deliberately so. Every subsequent ride pays back the setup cost again, and the payoff compounds per rider, which matters most for exactly the user the research surfaced: the one managing two people at once.

It also reduces a real safety risk. Re-entering mobility needs on every booking is an opportunity to forget one under time pressure. Defaults mean the wheelchair requirement is stated once, correctly, by someone who knows the answer.

Curbside is what you already get from Uber or Lyft: the car waits, you make your own way to it. Above that, the driver comes to the door and walks or wheels the rider out. Above that, the drop-off doesn't end at a curb — the rider is taken inside, into the lobby or waiting room. At the top, the rider is handed off to a named person: a receptionist, a front desk, someone who now knows they've arrived. The most complete tier starts inside the home, with the driver helping the rider get ready.

Checkout restates the whole configuration alongside the cost: which rider, which vehicle, which level of service at pickup and at drop-off, and what each adds. No fee revealed late, and no ambiguity about what was booked. The same screen doubles as the last chance to catch a wrong accommodation before a driver is dispatched.

The arithmetic is the point: at roughly three to five rides a week, depending on trip length, the discount covers the subscription and then keeps going. Below that it doesn't pay for itself, and we weren't shy that it's aimed at frequent riders.

It was designed to do two things. First, close the gap to Uber and Lyft pricing for high-frequency riders, so the premium services stopped being the reason to go elsewhere. Second, retention: a subscriber has a standing reason to book with Wanda again, and the savings grow the more they do.