Avis photo capture app

Avis is one of the world’s leading car rental companies. In Ukraine, it operates across several business processes: vehicle handover to customers, processing lease returns, and managing rentals. In each case, drivers and service managers must document the vehicle's condition. At the same time, photo documentation requirements vary across these processes.

Before this project, the photo documentation process was manual:

• Drivers photographed cars on their phones and sent files via messengers or email.

• Managers sorted, renamed, and uploaded the files to a server.

Avis came to Brights with the goal of organizing this process more efficiently. We took on the design and development of a mobile application and admin panel to automate and standardize photo sessions from capture to server delivery.

"For Avis, success means the driver choosing the app over their phone gallery — and saying it made the job easier."

Before any design work began, we studied who actually uses this app and how it happens.

The primary users are drivers and service managers: people working outdoors in varying light, often in tight spaces, with unstable internet, and sometimes both hands occupied. Photo sessions happen daily, often across multiple vehicles in a row. So, getting through each session quickly was the core requirement.

That context shaped every product decision. Sessions are structured around business workflows: one session per process, mandatory photos that cannot be skipped, and a clear sequence that removes guesswork.

The design team prioritized:

• offline reliability with automatic sync

• fast capture and easy retakes

• a UI with as few taps as possible

Ultimately, the design came down to one principle: maximum simplicity, minimum friction. Every screen was built around someone standing next to a car, on the clock, in uncontrolled conditions.

Structured photo sessions with an admin panel
The app's core functionality is a structured, guided photo workflow — configurable per process through a desktop admin panel.

Each session follows a clear, automated sequence:

• The driver selects the process type, and the app loads the corresponding template automatically.

• The app guides the driver step by step, showing which photos are required and flagging what's still missing.

• File naming, metadata, timestamps, and geolocation are handled automatically in the background.

• Once all required photos are captured, the app marks the session as completed, giving the AVIS team immediate visibility that it's ready for further processing.

License plate recognition via OCR
At the start of each session, the app automatically reads the car's license plate from the front-facing photo — no separate capture step or manual entry required.

The optical character recognition (OCR) functionality is a lightweight AI integration, yet its operational impact is immediate: fewer driver errors, faster session starts, and less friction.

Offline mode
Poor connectivity is the norm in many of the environments Avis staff encounter. Photos taken without internet are queued locally and uploaded automatically once a connection is restored, ensuring no data is lost and no session needs to be repeated.

Session continuity
Drivers can minimize the app mid-session and resume exactly where they left off. The app holds the full session state — same car, same template, same step — so an interruption doesn't mean starting over or losing progress.

The process that previously required manual coordination across multiple people — photo capture, file management, server uploads — now runs end-to-end inside a single app.

• Drivers work faster and more accurately.

• Managers are out of the manual routing loop.

Following the mobile app development, Avis requested a web version: a browser-based interface that lets users open a photo session via link, complete it using a given template, and transmit results through the same backend system. The session logic and photo sequence mirror the mobile app exactly, extending the same standardized workflow to desktop contexts.