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✨
⚠️ Problem
Bike rental shops in Venice Beach have been affected by the competition with E-transit companies & by the massive drops in transportation ridership due to COVID-19. Users avoid bike rental shops because it involves face-to-face interaction and there is no guarantee of cleanliness.
🪄 Solution
RideSafe Venice is a contactless bike and scooter rental service that seamlessly manages the rental process from start to finish. The app provides a platform for renters to search for sanitized bikes & scooters in Venice Beach and complete the rental process easily through the app.
⚙️ Process
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📰 Secondary Research
After many local bike shops closed, we did some research to see how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected bikeshare ridership.
Key insights:
01
Bikeshare ridership dropped by 44% during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.
02
The decline in docked bike-share ridership in some cities occurred shortly after statewide stay-at-home orders were implemented
03
Despite some recovery following phased re-openings, most US cities still had lower ridership in May 2020 compared to 2019
📈 User Journey Map
In our user journey mapping, we discovered that renting bikes on the Boardwalk is a drawn-out process with a lot of personal interaction, which can be uncomfortable, but returning bikes is hassle-free thanks to prepayment.
🔗 Prototyping
Having completed our secondary research, we organized our insights effectively by leveraging the design considerations outlined in the brief as categories. This approach helped us distill the essential features we aimed to incorporate into our final design, providing us with valuable direction moving forward.
Riders needs:
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To be reassured that rental shops are following covid-19 regulations and bikes are sanitary.
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Contactless bike rental pickups to limit face-to-face contact.
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A way to schedule bike rental in advance to avoid crowds and busy hours on the Boardwalk.
Shop owners needs:
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A platform to make the rental process as quick and easy as E-transit competitors, such as Bird & Lime Scooters.
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Support for his small business to attract more customers and increase bike rentals.
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A simple, easy way to share the bike shop’s COVID-19 precautions with customers.
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Speedy Rental Process
Users can simply scan their id, set up their payment, and review terms and conditions.
Supports Small Local Businesses
Users can set up their seat and vehicle adjustments and schedule completely contactless pickups through the app.
Customized, Contactless Pick ups
Users can set up their seat and vehicle adjustments and schedule completely contactless pickups through the app.
Sanitized & Safe
RideSafe shares the sanitization process and precautions each bike shop is taking to ensure users’ safety.
✨ Final Prototype
🤔 Reflections
Through this project, I learned the importance of being mindful of the primary audience when designing. After presenting our solution, stakeholders expressed interest in seeing more of the bike shop owners' experience with RideSafe. As a result, I plan to explore designing a user interface tailored to bike shop owners and conduct user testing to assess feasibility. In the future, we could also consider implementing subscriptions for frequent renters, promotions, and rewards.
Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic and remote collaboration, this project allowed us to learn and adapt our creative thinking. I am grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with my team members and contribute to a design solution that supports small businesses in difficult times.
02
The project must include these technical features, such as a screen-based interaction (website, app, kiosk, device, wearable, etc).
01
Customize your mobility system to the site, like Santa Monica Promenade, Downtown Culver City, Downtown Los Angeles, Highland Park, etc.
03
Design research includes field observation and interviewing to identify transportation issues on the chosen site.
🎯 Design Challenge
The challenge of this project was to identify a specific location in the city and devise a plan for improving mobility in the post-COVID era. We chose Venice Beach as our focus area and assessed how the pandemic has affected the beach's usage.
Designs must consider:
Rental shops report a usage decline due to stay-at-home orders and reduced tourism. They struggle with sanitation standards, impacting customer trust and revenue. Additionally, they face strong competition from dockless and docked micro-mobility companies offering greater user flexibility.
Diego R
Venice CA
We try to power wash the bikes once a day & give them a quick wipe down alcohol in between rides but customers are still afraid that the bikes are not 100% clean
Jay C
Venice CA
Last summer we saw a significant 40 percent drop on our rental business. The summer before that, we would run out of bikes on the weekends
Bobby F
Venice CA
A lot of our customers are going for lime/bird rentals. It's hit our business pretty hard. The thing with those scooters is, people can just drop them off anywhere
We try to power wash the bikes once a day & give them a quick wipe down alcohol in between rides but customers are still afraid that the bikes are not 100% clean
Diego R, Venice CA
Last summer we saw a significant 40 percent drop on our rental business. The summer before that, we would run out of bikes on the weekends
Jay C, Venice CA
A lot of our customers are going for lime/bird rentals. It's hit our business pretty hard. The thing with those scooters is, people can just drop them off anywhere
Bobby F, Venice CA
📝 Paper first
After finalizing the user flow, we created a low-fidelity paper prototype to quickly test onboarding ideas and understand the user journey.
🔀 User flow
After a thorough analysis of the user's current journey map, we designed a user flow that simplifies the onboarding and rental process, specifically targeting a reduction in face-to-face interactions.
We spoke to three users who, before COVID, frequently rented bikes from Venice Beach shops and used shared bike apps. They now avoid rental shops due to preferences for minimal in-person interaction, cleanliness concerns, and social distancing and overcrowding issues in Venice.
I use shared bikes less often because I’m unsure of their cleanliness, I always use hand sanitizer to feel safe
David, Los Angeles
When I ride bikes in Venice I avoid people without masks. Some people approach you and they don’t stay 6 feet apart, it’s frustrating
Leticia, Culver City
I used to rent bikes at the beach with my friends every other week but now I’m scared because Venice Beach gets so overcrowded
Ryan, Los Angeles CA
David
Los Angeles CA
I use shared bikes less often because I’m unsure of their cleanliness, I always use hand sanitizer to feel safe
Leticia
Culver City
When I ride bikes in Venice I avoid people without masks. Some people approach you and they don’t stay 6 feet apart, it’s frustrating
Ryan
Los Angeles CA
I used to rent bikes at the beach with my friends every other week but now I’m scared because Venice Beach gets so overcrowded
💭 Storyboards
We made a vision storyboard to brainstorm ideas for our app, visually exploring features and user experiences to shape our development approach.
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