All Star Bikers
Existing route apps for bikes rely on data sets and maps that were recorded while driving cars. They inherently don't represent or communicate the needs of bike commuters. This depresses the number of active urban bikers in Chicago and facilitates riskier journeys. In this student project I explore a potential app based solution.
CASE STUDY: Gamifying Bike Routes
Problem
“I got a flat on my bike this spring because my normal route grew a pothole over the winter. I had no idea it existed until I hit it.” -Elissa Baroso
Solution
Rather than avoiding traffic, bikers will rely on the app to avoid risky bike paths and be updated regarding changes to their local paths. The app will use gamification to encourage users to both share their bike type and leave the app open on their phones during rides. Since initial research suggested that bikers would not otherwise leave their phones open while riding (in the same way a car driver does for Waze); a biker will leave the app open in their pocket to earn points in the game, thereby recording their journey. This mobile bike app will suggest a route based on a users bike type and locate a bike rack nearest their destination. Early adopters will document routes out of a desire to help develop bike infrastructure in the city; with gamified elements awarding additional points for documenting potholes and road condition changes. Later adopters will value the up-to-date path information and pay to play games on their bike.
Process
Discovery Phase
This project was initially a week long class assignment while attending General Assembly's UX design immersive. I casually interviewed a fellow student about their day to uncover a problem that could be solved with a mobile app; in this case a flat tire that seemed preventable. Once the problem was identified the UX process could begin.
Creating a paper prototype
Market Research
I took a step back from Elisa's flat tire story and looked to identify existing solutions and resources. I wanted to be able to answer the following questions:
Did Google maps, Elisa's preferred navigation app, fail her and how?
Are urban bikers currently using digital resources and for what reasons?
What is the city of Chicago's involvement regarding bike-able pathways and roads?
1 and 2: To begin answering the first two questions I did some quick web searches for existing apps. Most of the advertised routing apps for bikes in the states cater to athletes or workouts by tracking distance and time. The Google maps bike route option piggy backs on its existing road data by preferring bike lanes.
3. The city of Chicago has a plethora of recently added digital biking resources.
A updated 2017 bike map is available online to view or request a paper (!) copy, but does not offer navigation.
Bike rack locations are recorded digitally and the racks are maintained by the city, you can have an abandoned bike removed and even request a bike rack instillation.
Chicago City Data, CDOT and Chicago Complete Streets automatically organize and encourage data collection, reporting and infrastructure requests as a part of the city's open source data policies.
They collect data on potholes, uncleared snow in bike lanes and vehicles parked in bike lanes.
Customer Research
Now that I had a better feel for the layout of Chicago biking, digital resources and infrastructure it was time to officially interview Elisa as a potential user of a bike app.
Key takeaways:
The pothole wasn't big enough for a car to notice but her tire popped because it fit perfectly inside of it.
Elisa stopped consulting online resources any time she had actually ridden the path herself.
Even if she was lost she prefered to just bike until she found herself rather than take her phone out.
She preferred to ask a friend for their route whenever departing from her familiar routes.
Her bike was a yellow vintage road bike she got from a used bike shop and its name was Star.
She does not commute through the winter.
Product Strategy
What is the value innovation?
Based on the one intended customer of Elisa, what app would have helped prevent a flat tire to her bike Star? I knew I needed a way to update and share the current conditions of her bike paths with information relevant to a vintage road-bike verses say a mountain bike which may not have been affected by that pothole. Collecting and maintaining that data would prove a challenge but there may have been a hint in Elisa's preference for asking a friend what path they took. This is the stage where I decided a useful solution might be an app that does for bikes what Waze does for cars.
If I could set up an app that let users update and share their local routes with each other and then also qualify that route with the type of bike they used it might be a more relevant routing service to any Chicago biker. And if I was going to encourage all Chicago bikers to share and update their paths then I needed to do more customer research.
Provisional personas:
I created these three personas to help record my existing assumptions about bike rider types in Chicago. If anything it would allow me to invalidate them as I went along but still keep track of what assumptions I was using to make design choices.
Fair Weather Fan:
May have cruiser bike or use Divvy. Carpe Diem bike rides. The goal of riding is to live a beautiful life.
Speed Racer:
Long journeys, expensive equipment, self competition and improvement; commutes downtown for work.
Romantic Commuter:
Broke Millennial, politically conscious, biking benefits the environment, wants to be a positive influence on community, most affordable used bike that reflects personality.
I then chose to intentionally ignore some of the needs of a Speed Racer persona or at least not serve their needs of health tracking. It would allow me avoid competing in the red market space of athletic bike apps and focus on the under-served blue market of environmentally conscious and/or broke commuters.
Customer Validation
How can I validate my basic value proposition that sharing your bike paths will mitigate risk for you and your friends while biking in Chicago?
I chose three people to interview based on maximizing their differences of biking habits in an urban setting. I then copied key observations from each person onto sticky notes.
I interviewed two additional riders, Maggie and Caeser, who were ideal because they not only had different bike types but also different riding habits and would help refine or invalidate my provisional personas. Maggie is a professed casual/infrequent biker who uses Divvy, while Caesar commutes year round even through winter on his mountain bike. None of the three of my interview subjects liked taking their phones out while on a ride.
Inexperienced urban riders want to know what expert riders are doing.
Utilizing an affinity map I sought to refine my thoughts into the following insights: The three commonly referred to bike types might roughly correlate to the different road condition needs and risk aversion of the user. All three users reported consulting an expert resource like Google Maps for Bikes only the first time they road somewhere. Once a user experienced the route they became more "expert" than the resource could ever be and stopped engaging it. Expert users consult a resource or other expert only when they find themselves new to the path about to be taken. (This includes taking a familiar path but with a new bike or with a new goal like a backpack of heavy groceries.) I synthesized these insights into one guiding sentence to frame my prototyping: Inexperienced urban riders want to know what expert riders are doing. This meant that even though Elisa could be considered an expert of her local paths, she still wanted to consult other experts for updates to road conditions.
Design Pivot
None of the three of my interview subjects liked taking their phones out while on a ride. This was proving to be a serious value innovation issue. If my customers didn't want to use their phones and were even less likely to consult a digital resource how would I collect data on local paths? Or at least how would I get users to sustain using an app with that kind of aversion to phones while biking?
I decided to take a leaf out of Pokemon Go's book. Despite the fact that the game drained battery life and used data, users would leave the phone open while wandering around their neighborhood to play the game. It also had a low-battery mode to leave the phone in your pocket while the game was playing and buzz you when a game element was nearby.
Perhaps gamifying a users local route could be the answer. And if that were the case why not gamify collecting and reporting things directly to the city of Chicago, like needed bike racks and pothole repairs? This could not only prevent a flat tire for Elisa but also improve her local paths to prevent her communty from getting a flat as well.
Prototype Phase
Though it might be considered a waste of resources to begin designing a prototype with so few assumptions about the value proposition validated, this was a class project and it required a finished prototype by the end of the week. I started by sketching a visual story board of what an ideal user experience would look like.
From there I recorded the necessary functionality of features to support that experience.
The app will need to offer users a routing ability and notify a user when historical routes may have become riskier.
Users will need to self-identify what bike they use so the data collected can be qualified.
If we gamify riding your bike with the app open, perhaps expert users will continue to offer their daily routes on the app.
Your daily commute could collect something, in the same way Pac-Man collects fruit on a path to win points.
I took my list of features and created an information architecture flow chart.
With a list of page requirements I then did a series of quick sketches to iterate what each page could look like. I did a 5 minute sketch sprint per page on the list. Each page would get 5, one minute, sketches to help me get ideas on the page and not be slowed down by finickiness. I would then use those sketches as a palate in which to make the final paper wire frame below.
I then made a paper prototype with Marvel to do some basic usability testing. And gave the testers the following simple script:
In order to collect and suggest route information All-Star Bikers tracks both the routes you take as well as the type of bike you use.
It gamifies the process by rewarding badges based on your normal commuting routes, and awarding points (STARS) for taking a suggested scenic route or completing a task like taking a picture of a pothole that will be sent to the local alderman.
Click around the app and talk aloud about your expectations and experience.
I made the basic improvements to my original sketches and created an updated UI flow chart of wireframes in Axure.
Next steps
The concept of a gaming bike app really resonates with local bikers that I have pitched the idea to. The next step is to design an actual test of some of the basic assumptions around the product. Two key things to test for will be willingness of early adopters to share their route information for infrastructure development and if riders are actually interested in playing a game on their bike in some metric of either downloads or repeat engagement. An additional stakeholder which I have yet to interview will be city aldermans. They seem to be an important gatekeeper in local bike infrastructure that I don't fully understand yet.
