Dubikes Iphone app

Dubikes helps people finding nearby bikes and parking stations in Dublin, Ireland. Based on your current location, it provides real-time information of available bikes, parking spots, estimated walking and cycling distance from your current location at a glance.

Year 

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My role

Why did I design this product?

The idea of making an app for Dublin bike came from the frustration of using the official Dublin bikes app. I took the opportunity to improve the Iphone app so that it would benefit city commuters and potentially increase the amount of people cycling. Promote positive impact on the environment.  

Pain points on the offical app

• As a user I find it really hard to understand the user interface
• Poor performance 

Goals

• The app needs to be simple and needs to achieve two main functions – Show parking and bike availabilities.
• Be able to search for a particular station.
• Easy to understand and present the important information without too much interactions. 

• Our main audience are workers who are living around the city area and need to commute to work
  
• University Students
• Tourtists 

User context and needs

• The target audience wants to find a bike to rent in the closest location and find a parking space closes to their intended destination fast.
• They would use it mainly in the morning (on their way to work) or in the evening (after work).
• They would be checking the bike or parking availabilities in their home, office or on the go (on the way to the nearby station or when they are looking for a parking spot at the nearby stations).
• Checking the app while they are cycling can be dangerous.
• They don't know how to get to the destination

User journey

1. Look for an available bike closest to them
2. Get a bike from the station
3. Cycling to the desire destination
4. Look for a parking station which has an available parking space
5. Return bike

After mapping out the user journey and gathered all the pain points (feedback on appstore for the official Dublin bike app )

I came up with a design showing pins with numbers of available bikes and parking spots representing bike stations. When the pin is tapped, more bike station info shows at the bottom.

I tested this very 1st prototype to understand more about how people use it. I tested with 3 Dublin bikes users (used the offical app before) and 3 Dublin bike users who don't use the bike app. The result was positive, so we decided to release this version.

After releasing the first version as a free app on the app store, We received a lot of user feedback and feature requests. We found that most users don't need so much information about the station, they just want to know how many available bikes or parking spaces quickly and at a glance.  The most requested feature is the ability to save your favourite stations and only show them in order to be able to see them easily. Other paint point was the find a bike and find a spot switch being too far from the thumb reaching area, as a lot of users use it with one hand. 

After gathering all the feedback and idea prioritisation (Value vs Effort), I decided to add an easy way to save your favourite stations and hide/show them, to provide a more immersive map so that users can see more stations. 

2nd version was release in 2015, in this version I further simplied the design. The aim is to give users the informations they need quickly and clearly. New in the versions:

• The look for bike/parking space switcher moved to the bottom right, so that users can easily reach them. I also only used icons instead of text in order to save space and to have a more immerseive map experience.
• Favourite stations – in the past when users tap on one of these pins on the map, more bike station info would slide up from the bottom of the screen. In the version users can toggle a station pin to favourite/unfavourite the stations. On the bottom left of the screen, there is a button to toggle show/hide all the favourite stations.

Some examples of favourite / unfavourite a bike station

When there are many changes and new features added. Onboarding users was a must. I created a simple carousel to run users through the new features, user can only dismiss it in the last slide. 

I wanted to have the app icon really simple and recognisable at the same time represent Dublin. After exploring a few options. I ended up using the towers of Dubin castle.  

• Even more maps immersive map view
• Direction to the desire station
• Android version
• Smartwatch integration, so that users can see bike and parking spots at a glance without looking at their phone. It could be really beneficial for users who are cycling and needs to know parking availability in the nearby area.

Apple Watch concept

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