In this undergraduate thesis an everyday problem was addressed: the transportation of students to and from the University Campus, in ecological and cost effective way. A mobile carpooling platform was developed for the students at University of Patras to provide a user-friendly environment for scheduling trips among students, while using the stops from the existing bus lines as key reference points of the trips.

At first a study was conducted to explore existing carpooling applications worldwide. Along with this research, a questionnaire was developed to assess the students’ awareness of the term carpooling, evaluate the current state of transportation to the campus and gather insights into any prior carpooling experiences the students may have had. Both results were used to extract the functional requirements of the platform .

Based on the functional requirements three major user roles were created, the driver, passenger and admin. The drivers can create new trips by providing essential details like start and end locations, available passenger seats and start time. They can accept/reject passenger join requests. The driver profile contains information for completed trips, reviews they’ve posted and feedback they’ve received. They get incentive coupons (vouchers) to get discounts at a specific stores. A passenger can only join trips by making a join request . He edits his profile, check his notifications as well as acquire incentive coupons. The admin role is responsible to access analytics on ongoing and completed trips, as well as newly registered users. Admins can view detailed data on all enrolled users, manage user accounts and incentive coupons .

With the platform now completed the System Usability Scale (SUS) test was selected to assess the platform’s usability . During the test phase 32 students from the University of Patras were invited to participate. The evaluation was conducted on a controlled environment in order to ensure consistent conditions. More specifically, each participant was tasked with using the platform through their mobile phone, while following a set of instructions designed to guide them through all the available features of the platform, both from the perspective of a driver and a passenger. This process ensured that each participant gained a comprehensive overview of the platform. Following that, each participant was asked to answer the SUS questionnaire in order to evaluate the platform’s overall usability. The resulting SUS score was calculated to be 87.1, which falls within the “good” to “excellent” usability range. This indicates that the original goals set for the platform were largely achieved.

In conclusion, the primary goal was to create a user-friendly interface that would enable students of the University of Patras to schedule shared trips to and from the campus. The results of the usability evaluation confirm that this goal was largely achieved, offering a promising alternative solution for the students’ daily transportation needs. A solution that utilizes the existing car fleet more efficiently by reducing the amount of cars with one passenger while also distributing the students more evenly between the different methods of transportation.

Keywords: Carpooling for University students, mobile application.