Overview
Project:
BikeBOS is a mobile mapping application for commuters and tourists moving by bicycle through the Boston area. As a long-time bike commuter in other large cities, I was surprised to find a lack of mobile apps made specifically for Boston cyclists. Borrowing from and expanding upon mobile route-mapping apps used in other metropolitan areas and employing best practices for mobile mapping, BikeBOS is designed to support rider needs while mapping on-the-go in heavily stimulating urban environments. The design expands on typical mapping app functionality by incorporating crowd-sourced hazard warnings and a customized navigation interface connecting health, weather, and other app widgets.
Goals:
Create mobile mapping app for commuters and recreational cyclists in Boston
Personalize app use to increase safety, usability, usefulness, and delight for diverse users and use cases
Team: Solo design exercise for graduate-level prototyping and interaction design course
Role: Product Designer
Research
Defining context of use
Sketching & Wireframes
Interactive prototype design
Date: November 2019
Process
Research
I began with a review of mobile mapping apps for cycle recreation (Bikemap, CycleHire), city-based cycle maps (London’s Santander Cycles), and common apps for car travel (Google Maps, Waze). I interviewed fellow cyclists about travel habits and their most liked or useful mapping app functions. Lastly, I completed a literature review of existing technologies used by city cycle apps and best practices for designing mobile mapping apps.
Findings:
Defining Domain + Context of Use
For any cyclist, expert or novice, the high sensory stimulation surrounding urban environment travel, all while exerting oneself physically, can create an environment of stress and sensory overload. Understanding and designing for this demanding context of use was most important to this mobile app.
Context of Use chart based on Maguire & Bevan’s User Requirements Analysis model
Sketching + Wireframes
Sketches and wireframes helped to plot out solutions to create an app with an interface complex enough to fulfill rider needs to plot a route according to safety, efficiency, or desire to explore, with an interaction simple enough to provide only the most pertinent information for navigation during active use.
Design Iteration - Navigation
Sketches: Strip features unnecessary to the primary task of navigation
Wireframes: How few features can be displayed while still providing effective direction?
Final Solution: High contrast, interactive map; Bold directional arrows and text provide redundancy for easily understood instruction
Design Iteration - Route Mapping
Sketches explore user’s route preference needs: distance, route type, pace, elevation, etc.
Final Solution provides flexible route options to accommodate rider preference, from easy-going bike-path only routes to fast routes on major roadways
Design Iteration - Road Hazard Warnings
Sketches: Hazard icon versus icon with color and haptic feedback
Final Solution includes color, icon, and text hazard indicators
Solution
BikeBOS provides a much needed mobile app for Boston cyclists with the flexibility to plan a route according to the needs of the ride - whether that’s a need for speed or a leisurely exploration. The app incorporates four features for increased safety, usability, usefulness, and delight for a broad spectrum of users.
Feature 1 - Mapping Preference
PROBLEM: Tourists or others unfamiliar with an area feel uncomfortable navigating busy city streets.
SOLUTION: Fast, Moderate, or Easy Going paths allow riders to plot course according to roadway preference. Cyclists can easily compare how this selection affects distance and time.
Feature 2 - Exploration
PROBLEM: Regular riders want mapping info FAST, more leisurely riders want to explore.
SOLUTION: In the menu bar, cyclists select My Places for quick access to saved locations or Explore to find a tour route or place of interest. Here, familiar landmarks orient riders.
Feature 3 - Reporting Road Hazards
PROBLEM: Potholes and slick streets are major hazards to cyclists, but this info is rarely shown on mapping apps.
SOLUTION: Warnings are crowd-sourced. At the end of a ride, cyclists report hazards to caution fellow riders with up-to-date warnings.
Feature 4 - Integrating Apps in Navigation View
PROBLEM: Riders want to view health, weather, and fitness information during a ride, but must dismount or switch apps while in motion to do so.
SOLUTION: Integrating apps in navigation view grants access to relevant ride information without closing the map.
View All Features - Interactive Prototype
Challenges
Designing an app employed by users while in motion was a fun challenge. Everything from scale, icons, and color to amount of on-screen information and use of haptics was considered for this context of use and made an impact on the final solution.
Creating an app for all types of riders, from daily commuters to tourists, challenged the priorities of features to add or subtract. I tried to optimize flexibility through customization, allowing regular users to add features as needed, without overwhelming novices with too many options.
Results and Reflection
This design was presented to Human Factors graduate students as a final presentation for a Prototyping and Interaction Design course. Feedback was generally very positive; students also provided ideas for ways to improve or expand the capabilities of the interface, including:
Enlarge or change the shape of route preference selection (Fast > Easy Going) from slim bars to large buttons for easy selection by riders
Consider more distinct color palette for route preferences - all blues could be difficult to see in different weather conditions
Add multiple map views, e.g. a heads up display or satellite map in addition to current north facing map
Incorporate both day and night modes
Future Direction:
I appreciate all of the design advice given by peers and would like to add new features and play around with new designs to make these changes.
User testing is very important for this app. Selecting a number of different weather and road conditions, rider types, and bike types to account for different stances (upright cruiser vs. hunched over road biker) will be crucial to understanding the capabilities of the design. Unfortunately, the app was developed in the midst of several New England snowstorms - so we’ll have to wait for summer!