Lyft is one of the fastest-growing companies in the “sharing” or gig economy, reaching a milestone of 1 billion rides in September 2018. Consider that one of the world’s largest transportation companies owns no fleet of vehicles, and employs less than 5000 people, despite the fact they facilitated over 50 million rides a month in hundreds of US cities prior to the pandemic, covering over 95% of the US population. However, health risks associated with COVID-19 caused Lyft’s revenue to drop by almost two-thirds in 2020, impacting both Lyft corporate and their contracted drivers. One of the most important mechanisms that enables the gig economy is qualified and accurate ratings from users, which allow operators to divert resources appropriately and reward contractors that provide high levels of customer service. The current rating system tacitly encourages users to only rank their driver using very good or very bad rankings, due to the known limitations of a five-star scale—a system that is even more problematic when both riders and drivers are in short supply. Your goal is to replace the current five-star system. You must consider the ways various rating and review systems constrain the input of users, the ease of use (e.g., speed of input in a busy urban environment, evolving pandemic policies), and the ways in which this information could be used maliciously against drivers, while also building on the evolution of rating approaches in the gig economy at large.