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© nine75, Thimphu

01Case study

drukdrive: cab booking and car rental for Bhutan

Web and app design for a cab booking and car rental service in Bhutan. One search form for daily rides, outstation trips, rentals and self-drive; 4 screens from search to a paid booking.

A MacBook and an iPhone showing the drukdrive home screen on a cream background. The heading reads Where you want to go? A search form has tabs for Daily Rides, Outstation, Rental and Self Drive, fields for pick up Thimphu, Druk School, drop off Punakha, Taxi Parking, a date and time, and a black Search button. The phone shows the same form with Recent searches and Popular cars below.
Client
drukdrive
Sector
Mobility
Year
2025
Services
UI/UX design, Branding

drukdrive books cabs and rents cars across Bhutan: a ride across Thimphu, a day trip to Punakha, a week in a Prado with or without a driver. The client had a working service and a website that made it hard to use. nine75 designed the web app and the iOS and Android app from the ground up, with one search form for all 4 ride types, a 4-screen booking path, local bank payment, and a mark that works at 20px in a tab bar.

Problem

Cab booking in Bhutan mostly happens over the phone. A dispatcher quotes a price, you agree, you pay the driver. Any app has to be quicker than that call or people go back to it. The old site was not. Daily rides, outstation trips and rentals each had their own page and their own form. Prices appeared late, after personal details. Visitors from abroad could not tell whether the fare was in Nu. or dollars. Sign-in was required before you could even see a car. And the payment step sent people to a bank page that looked nothing like the site, which is where trust went.

Approach

The whole product hangs off one form. Daily Rides, Outstation, Rental and Self Drive are tabs; switching one changes the fields, not the page. Pick up, drop off, date, time, and a duration estimate before you search. The form is the hero on the home page and shrinks to a one-line summary with an edit button on the results page.

Results are rows, not a grid: photo, name, seats, fuel, AC, a rating badge, the price with taxes included, Book Now. Filters for vehicle type, brand, capacity and rating sit in a column on desktop and behind a Filter button on the phone. Sorting defaults to price, lowest first. You can browse and choose without an account; the app only asks you to sign in when it needs a phone number to send the code to.

Review, OTP and payment each keep the booking summary on the right: pick up, drop off, the car, the traveller, the total. Paying half now and the rest to the driver is the default, because that is how people already book cabs here. Net banking through the RMA gateway comes first with the Bank of Bhutan and the other local banks; cards and PayPal follow for visitors. The confirmation is a receipt you can save as a PDF, since the driver will ask to see it.

A currency switch in the header shows Nu. for residents and dollars for visitors, on every price, so nobody does mental arithmetic at the roadside.

For the brand we drew a compact “dd” mark that sits beside the wordmark on the web and stands alone in the app tab bar. The palette is ink on cream, with green kept for one job: confirming something worked.

Outcome

Search to a paid, confirmed booking is 4 screens: results, review, code, payment. 56 screens across web, iOS and Android, sharing one set of form fields, rows and buttons. The design handed over includes empty results, a failed payment and a cancelled booking, the states that usually get invented in a hurry later.

What we would do next

A driver-side app: the same booking rows, seen from the other seat. Live trip status once a cab has been dispatched. And rental extras, a child seat or a second driver, priced on the same row as the car instead of in a footnote.

03Screens

Up close.

An OTP verification page with six digit boxes, two filled with 2 and 7, a red Time left 1:53 countdown and a Pay Nu 1520 Now button. On the right, Your Booking shows pick up, drop off, the Hyundai i20, the traveller Karma Dorji and a Grand Total of Nu 1520.
Fig. 01 — The one-time code step keeps the booking summary in view so nobody wonders what they are paying for
Choose your payment method. Net Banking is selected, showing Bank of Bhutan, BNB, BDBL and T Bank logos, with a Select your bank dropdown set to Bank of Bhutan and a bank account number field, then a Pay Nu 1520 button. A second option reads Debit/Credit/ATM Card with Visa and Mastercard logos. Your Booking summary on the right.
Fig. 02 — Local banks first through the RMA gateway, cards second for visitors paying from abroad

More screens

  • The full drukdrive home page. A cream hero with the search form, tabs for Daily Rides, Outstation, Rental and Self Drive, One Way and Return, pick up and drop off fields, date, time and Duration 3 hrs. Below, Recent searches, a Popular cars row with a Prado, a Coaster bus, a Hiace and a Santa Fe at $58 a day, Popular car types tiles, and a Frequently asked questions list.
    One search form covers all 4 ride types; the tab changes the fields, not the page
  • Search results page reading Found 7 cabs from Thimphu to Punakha, sorted by price. A filter column for vehicle type, brand, capacity and ratings. Seven rows, each with a car photo, name and type chip, seats, fuel, AC, a rating badge, a price such as Nu 3500 including taxes and fees, and a black Book Now button.
    Each cab is one row, price and Book Now on the right, so 7 options fit without scrolling much
  • The Review Your Booking page. A strip shows pick up Druk School, Thimphu, 02 hrs 30 mins, drop off Taxi Parking, Punakha. A Hyundai i20 card follows, then a Personal Information form with title, full name, phone, email, pickup and drop-off address. On the right, a Price Summary of Nu 3,975 with options to pay half now, pay in full or hold the booking, and a Pay Nu 1520 now button. A Read before you book list sits below the form.
    Pay half now and the rest to the driver: the default fits how people already book cabs here
  • Two iPhones. The right one shows the app home with ride-type tabs, pick up Thimphu, Near Druk School, drop off Punakha, Khuruthang Taxi Parking, a date, a Search button, recent searches and popular cars. The left one lists Found 23 cars sorted by price, each a card with a Toyota Prado GX photo, 5 seats, petrol, Thimphu, three green ticks and $58 a day.
    The app keeps the same form and the same result rows as the web, only stacked
  • Two iPhones at an angle showing Sign in and Create an account screens. Each has email and password fields, a Remember Me checkbox, a black Continue button, and Google, Apple, Facebook and Phone options in outlined buttons, with a small terms line at the bottom.
    Sign in by email, a phone number or an existing account; the form fits above the keyboard
  • Two iPhones. The left shows step Final Step of a 3-step progress bar, the trip strip, a Toyota Land Cruiser card, payment options Debit/Credit Card and PayPal with PayPal selected, and a Net Payable $69 with a Proceed to Payment button. The right shows a green tick, Booking Successful, and a receipt table with transaction ID, date, payment mode, status, name, mobile number, email and amount, plus Save as PDF and Print Receipt links.
    The confirmation is a receipt you can save, because the driver will ask to see it

04Results

What changed.

56 Screens designed

6 → 4 screens

Search to paid booking

4 Ride types on one form