Uber’s new app design will make travel easier whatever your language

Ridesharing app Uber has announced two brand new features designed to make pickups more seamless. Focusing on greater transparency, one will allow users to get a better idea of the arrival status of their ride, while a language translation feature has been added to make communication between drivers and passengers easier.

According to the company, the redesign was created in order to give peace of mind to customers, and presents a sequence of rotating, actionable notifications regarding their pickup, including the remaining minutes before a car arrives, where they should meet their driver, where to walk toward, and helpful instructions for navigating airports, arenas and event venues. “We built this so riders can feel even more confident tracking the status of their trip, in addition to monitoring a driver’s progress within the Uber app map screen,” the company said about the update.

The update also sees in-app text becoming more comprehensible and visible when a driver is nearing arrival so that their first name, license plate details, car colour, make and model all come up. Uber has said that a forthcoming update will include information on safely exiting the vehicle.

Uber app — The app now has translations for messaging and more in-depth information on drivers © Uber

Uber has also rolled out a translation tool so that passengers and drivers can communicate with each other more easily, even if there is a language barrier between them. Previously, the message text sent from a driver would appear in that driver’s language preference, for example a driver’s Spanish language preference would result in a Spanish text being sent, and vice-versa. The new feature lets a passenger or driver tap to instantly translate a message into their preferred language across over 100 supported languages.

“This feature was built for situations in which a driver or rider maintains different preferred languages, or when English is a secondary language. We anticipate this being most helpful for drivers whose primary language isn’t English, and for riders that are travelling abroad outside the US, translation is available for pre-generated messages, and for any written message sent between a rider and driver,” Uber said.