Acerca de
ON THE ROAD
A GPS Tracking App that Improves Biking Engagement
Project @ Carnegie Mellon HCI Institute
Cooperated with Wendy Ju and Diana Wang
On The Road is a mobile app for Giant, available for bikers with any bicycle and skill levels. Users will be recommended with trails generated by their preferences, allowed to join and invite people nearby, and provided with multiple types of interesting challenges during their riding experience.
The app brings exposure for Giant among the bikers and allows users to gain Giant points, a virtual currency that can be used for discounts while buying Giant products. This will consequently attract more bikers to buy Giant products and further increase their stickiness towards Giant.
Background
No Friend, No Cycling
Giant has an extremely diverse user group, their customers range from newbies to professionals with very different goals. Cyclists face the challenge to find someone with similar levels, skills and preferences to go on rides with, which leads to decrease in motivation thus less joyful riding experiences overall. Bringing cyclists with the same goals and abilities together remains a challenge.
Giant has an extremely diverse user group, their customers range from newbies to professionals with very different goals. Cyclists face the challenge to find someone with similar levels, skills and preferences to go on rides with, which leads to decrease in motivation thus less joyful riding experiences overall. Bringing cyclists with the same goals and abilities together remains a challenge.
Primary Research
A. Stakeholder Analysis
Primary Research
B. User Motivation Analysis
Through research, a key motivational factor for cycling is social support (mainly supports from friends and family). Finding friends and family members to go on rides with is great, but in many cases they are not interested in this sport. This diagram has helped us better understand the advantages and challenges in finding biking companions from different social circles. Our goal is to help cyclists step outside their immediate social circle more comfortably when seeking the right companions for biking.
Then, What can we do?
If we bring cyclists with the same goals and abilities together, then Giant Bicycle can foster an enjoyable and supportive environment for its biker community and customer loyalty.
We broke this hypothesis into 4 main questions:
How to make biking fun and motivational for Giant’s customers?
Why can’t cyclists find a community?
Why do people want to bike with others?
What values will Giant receive from creating a biking community?
1
2
3
4
Through researching this process, we discovered...
Riders enjoy a socialized exercising experience with friends who have the similar interest, while many of them encounter constraints finding their partners.
Social connection diagram for bikers
Ideation
Brainstorming: How to make biking enjoyable?
Through group brainstorming and mind-mapping, we discovered a potential opportunity to make biking a fun, sociable exercise. We then each came up with 9 ideas keeping the mind map and hypothesis in mind, and collected all our ideas to discover any interesting directions. We found out that all of us have touched upon the theme of exploring scenic routes as a way to connect bikers. We went on exploring a few more directions and screens to flesh out the idea more, and finally landed a solution that allows bikers to explore personalized trails to connect to other bikers of similar interests and levels.
Information Architecture & Ideation Mindmapping
Design Outcome
Account service: create personalized challenge and experience
AI route finder based on users' preference
Find friends near you and ride together
Ride Challenges and have fun!
Summary
Emerging Technological Capabilities
Our proposal is to create a location tracking mobile app which provides challenges and rewards for users and allows connections between different types of users, in order to improve their interest and stickiness to cycling. Hence, the basic capabilities of the app includes:
- Using computer vision algorithm to calculate the terrain and generate potential routes.
- Processes user preferences and make recommendations of routes based on AI algorithm
- Provides map information and detection of other users nearby
- Provides a communication system between users
- Automatically generates the trail with navigation and challenges based on multiple factors
- Holds a gallery where users can see and share photos taken by self and others
Summary
User Testing and Validation
Summary
Afterthoughts
To increase Giant Bicycles’ brand impact, we want to transfer the value “increasing brand impact” to more concrete terms and make sure that bikers can see the tangible benefits of using Giant Bicycles’ products and services. One way we can do this is by using our app to collect user data, such as average riding distance, speed, routes taken, and the model of bike used. This data can then be used by Giant Bicycles to tailor their business model and make better decisions on which products to develop and market to meet the needs of their target customers.
By collecting and analyzing this data, Giant Bicycles can gain a deeper understanding of their customers' needs and preferences. For example, they may discover that bikers in a certain region tend to prefer bikes with certain features or that bikers who ride longer distances tend to prioritize comfort over speed. We could also adopt AUIs that learn and predict user’s behaviors to make our app more user-friendly. For example, saving user’s favorite trails so the app can recommend more tailored options next time, or recommending trails best for certain times during the day based on rider’s riding schedule. Armed with this information, Giant Bicycles can develop market products that better meet these specific needs, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Overall, by leveraging technology and data analytics, we can help bikers see the concrete benefits of using Giant Bicycles’ products and services, while also enabling Giant Bicycles to make more informed business decisions that ultimately lead to greater success for Giant Bicycles.