Scooter Rental App — On-Demand Booking Application

Features of the Application We Worked On

Booking apps should have a certain set of features to maximize the convenience of using a rental item. In the Scooter Rental App, we integrated only up-to-date functionality for the best user experience possible. We concentrated our efforts on three areas: UX/UI design, technical SEO analysis, and content audit.

Offline Rides

Our customer is a scooter booking company we had a chance to work with and help develop an application from scratch. They provide affordable booking services for those who want to rent custom-made 4-wheel 2-seat electric scooters known as Scooter Rental App. Whether you want to shop in the mall with comfort, save your shopping bags somewhere, or take a break from shopping and ride for fun with the company — Scooter Rental App is an ideal choice for shopping and recreational purposes.  The Scooter Rental App is an easy-to-use, user-friendly solution that you can download onto your iOS or Android device. With Scooter Rental App, you can have a Day Pass plan and a coupon option that you can use to have a discount on your Scooter Rental App ride.

Force Finish Ride in Offline Mode

Typically, users end their ride by clicking on the "Finish" button on their device and returning Scooters to the parking station. However, there are cases where users might fail to finish the ride started in offline mode. It usually happens due to:

• user forgetting to finish the ride;
• user's device dying;
• rebooting of the scooter IoT device;
• issues with the BLE connection.

If any of the above-mentioned situations happen, we've made sure that other users can use the scooter or an initial user could start another ride with the Force Finish Ride feature. It allows users to finish the ride if they cannot do it in offline mode.

Coupon Logic

We enabled using discount coupons and accumulating referral credits in the "Ride discounts" section of the app. The system of coupons and referrals increases acquisition, and users can accumulate discounts and use them in their day pass rides.The discount page in the Scooter Rental App is user-friendly and can be easily accessed through the main menu panel. From there, you will be able to view the total amount of discounts, type in the coupon code, and see referral credits and coupons used.

Sleep Mode

The Scooter Sleep Mode is another great feature that was added to the Admin panel. It aims to minimize night traffic by reducing scooter update frequency to every 1-2 minutes. It's especially useful at night when the scooters are not used.

Trunk Logic

Every Scooter has a trunk for storing shopping bags and other stuff. We've made it possible for users to unlock the trunks of their rented scooters within the app. And if a user experiences difficulties opening a trunk, they can always contact the Scooter Rental App support team. The Admin can assist with opening a trunk using the Open Trunk button in WAP.

Create manual entities from the Admin Panel

To present an alternative to renting scooters without installing an app. An Admin Panel user (Admin / Dispatcher) can create a profile of a customer, and create a payment and a ride manually.

Sales report


To present an alternative to renting scooters without installing an app. An Admin Panel user (Admin / Dispatcher) can create a profile of a customer, and create a payment and a ride manually.

Rental location administration

Full rental location administration is done with the Admin panel which allows easy scaling of the number of operating locations within a short period.

Xamarin.Forms to .NET MAUI Migration


Since Microsoft announced it would end the support of Xamarin and replace it with MAUI by May 2024, we initiated the migration process of the Scooter Rental App from Xamarin.Forms to .NET MAUI. It will ensure the app stays secure and up-to-date by following modern standards set by this new single platform for creating all apps.

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What We Did: Challenges and Solutions

To make the Scooter Rental App reach its functionality goals, we have implemented several development solutions. The Xamarin.Forms open-source UI framework was used for developing native apps for iOSs and Android platforms.
 For sustainable productivity, we have chosen Ruby on Rails 6.0.3 as basic engineering technology. We have also created the Web Admin Panel with ActiveAdmin 2.9.0, allowing admins to manage users, monitor scooters, set fees, and manage payments. For firmware, we used an IoT device powered by an nRF9160 compact chip that enables advanced processing and security capabilities.

Challenges deep-dive

Here are the main challenges that we've solved during the development:

• Embedded Development. To integrate default Scooter to operate with digital key and mobile application.
• Bluetooth technology. To support BLE technology to have a network-free connection to device and to scooter.
• Offline mode. Internet coverage impacts synchronization of the data and communicating with Backend and IoT.

• Failing to open a trunk with the mobile application. This issue can be caused by the loss of Bluetooth connection.

Those are the main challenges that we've solved during development.

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Timeline

Here are the timeline of the project:

• Q1 2022. WAP management of operating activities.
• Q2 2022. Coupons and benefits logics, as well as campaigns administration.
• Q3 2022. Single Business Price model usage, Social Sign-Ups.
• Q4 2022. Digital wallets and Rental location administration.
• Q1 2023. Push notifications and In-app messages. Firebase / SendGrid logging. Sales report. Manual entities (customer, payment, ride) on the Admin panel.
• Q2 2023. Appsflyer Integration. Email Blacklist
• Q3 2023. UI / UX improvements for the Rental purchasing flow, Tutorials, and the Ride finishing flow.
• Q4 2023. Improving Tutorial UI / UX. Support rental location set-up.
• Q1 2024. Full rental location administration is done with the admin panel.

We continue to improve the project and add new features to it. We hope you'll enjoy using our app as much as we did its development!