Product Design
Outdoorsy RV Handoff
Outdoorsy's peer-to-peer RV rental marketplace had invested heavily in its booking and payment experience, but the physical handoff between owner and renter remained a paper-based, ad hoc process that introduced friction, liability, and trust gaps.
These gaps resided at a critical point in the rental process: the moment the keys to the RV changed hands. During Outdoorsy's Lab Day initiative, I identified this as the platform's most significant unaddressed experience gap and built a mobile-first solution to close it.
The complete UX process documentation for this engagement lives at the direct link below.
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The RV handoff — the moment an owner transfers their vehicle to a renter — was entirely outside the platform experience. No digital record of vehicle condition, no structured inspection process, no in-app documentation for either party. For a platform built on peer-to-peer trust, this was a strategic vulnerability: disputes over damage, condition, or expectations had no reliable source of truth. The gap was costing both owner confidence and renter trust at the exact moment the rental relationship was established.
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Daryle M. // Lead Designer
Ben R. // Lead Designer
Sarah B. // Lead Researcher
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Conducted a content and visual audit of the existing handoff process — mapping every friction point from booking confirmation through key exchange and vehicle inspection. Led design alongside a second designer and researcher to develop a mobile-first handoff flow that digitized the inspection process, created a structured condition record for both parties, and brought the key exchange moment fully inside the Outdoorsy platform experience.
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The redesign addressed a critical trust gap in the Outdoorsy platform — bringing the most vulnerable moment of the rental relationship into a structured, documented, in-app experience. The solution held high-impact potential for dispute reduction, owner confidence, and renter trust. The friction identified in this process directly inspired subsequent independent product development — a startup concept currently in prototyping that reimagines the key exchange problem across peer-to-peer rental platforms more broadly.
