Case Study | Uber Interview Question
Question
You’re Uber and you want to design a heat map to recommend to
drivers where to wait for a passenger. How would you approach this?
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Case Study
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Answer ( 1 )
Let us take the example of Bangalore as the city in which the Uber driver operates. We will design a heatmap for him.
Let us assume that Bangalore is divided in 4 regions – North, South, West and East, The driver would have the option of choosing which region he operates the most in (would depend on where he lives and how far he can travel for rides).
Then we break a region into smaller localities (as per their size). This will be the most granular level for the heatmap.
For the heatmap, for each locality , we would require historical+live data of the following-
1. No. of pickups
2. No. of drops to that locaility
3. No. of ride requests raised (but no pickups) – may be there is pent-up demand we are not catering to
4. Proximity to key populous areas – like workspace hubs, shopping area, the airport and a railway station
5. Peak times (will be found as per no. of pickups splurging during a specific time of the day).
The heatmap would be shaded as per a “number” allotted to the locality. The “number” depends on the above 5 variables – it can be a weighted average of these. The driver does not need to know the number, just the shade of the colour would give him an idea of how the locality is faring in the 5 variables mentioned above.