RideSafe Venice app is a contactless bike and scooter rental service for Venice Beach that seamlessly manages the rental process from start to finish and allows users to find sanitized vehicles.
Academic Project
Type: Mobile Design.
Role: App Designer, Graphic Designer & Design Researcher.
Team: Rachael Legge & Eduardo Sebastian Paz.
Year: 2020.
Bike shops adapting to new regulations brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Problem
Bike rental shops in Venice have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Six months after the pandemic started Bike rental shops have been affected by the competition with E-transit companies & by the massive drops in transportation ridership due to COVID-19.
Insights
People rent less in Venice shops because they are concerned about cleanliness and want to avoid face-to-face interactions.
• Lower usage of bikes/scooters from rental shops. People avoid bike rental shops because it involves face-to-face interaction.
• Social distancing & crowding. People avoid renting bikes from rental shops in Venice because the Boardwalk gets overcrowded.
• Sanitation of rental bikes. People avoid renting bikes because 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 and allows users to find sanitized vehicles.
The app provides a platform for renters to search for sanitized bikes and scooters in Venice Beach and complete the rental process easily through the iOS app. We even offer various protection options, covid safe tips and route navigation, one-click rental extensions, “on my way” and “I’m here” for speedy rental pickup, and 30 minutes guaranteed response for issues that may arise during your rental. Our goal is to provide a delightful and safe rental experience for residents of Venice who do not own bikes but enjoy getting outside for a bike ride and So cal exploration. We hope that by doing this, the number of bike rentals will increase leading bike shops to feel financially comfortable with re-opening and expanding their rental programs.
RideSafe supports small businesses because it allows users to search, check out rental shops' contact info and pricing, leave reviews, and visually see how the stores look and what they offer through the app.
RideSafe allows a quick and simple sign-up process for users. Users just have to scan their id, set up their payment, and review terms and conditions. It also allows users to set up their ride preferences for contactless seat adjustments. The great part of this setup is they can always review or change them later in account settings.
The app also shows users how each bike rental shop is sanitizing vehicles and what precautions they are taking to keep them safe. It also allows them to schedule completely contactless curbside pickups and returns.
Continue scrolling to read a full version of this case study.
Woman riding a bike in Venice Beach.
Design Challenge
How might we ensure a safe and seamless bike rental experience for users in Venice during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Interviews
Through our interviews, we found out that people rent less in Venice shops because they were concerned about the cleanliness of vehicles and wanted to avoid face-to-face interactions.
Leticia Corveloni shares her experience when visiting Venice Beach.
From our interviews, we discovered that people are trying to avoid big crowds during the pandemic as well as shopping that involves face-to-face interaction.
All interview participants selected Dockless Bikes/Scooters as their preferred way to rent. Listing the benefits of self-service, like, least interactions with people, easier to locate, pay and quicker process.
Results for the survey question about preferred rental methods.
Ryan Holman shares his experience with shared vehicles.
From our interviews, we discovered that people are trying to avoid big crowds during the pandemic as well as shopping that involves face-to-face interaction.
Our Target Users
The people we decided to focus on are rental shop owners and riders. We created personas of them to remind ourselves of their pain points and needs.
Jay is our shop owner persona.
Rental Shop Owners
One of the reasons for designing this project is to help small businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Jay is the owner of Jay’s Rentals in Venice, CA. Since the pandemic started, he has been trying to keep customers and staff safe from COVID-19. His business has been affected by the competition of E-transit companies and also by the massive drop in transportation ridership due to the pandemic.
Riders
Riders are an essential part of this design challenge. Rentals have slowed down because they are concerned about COVID-19. The sanitation of vehicles and the interactions with strangers have discouraged them to visit rental shops.
Jenn is our rider persona.
Secondary Research
COVID-19 brought massive drops in transportation ridership across the board…
“Transit and dockless systems shuttered completely amid a roughly 70% drop in riders, docked bike-share services only saw a 44% drop in ridership from March to April and have largely rebounded…”
- Smart Cities Dive
Research shows that the daily usage of bird and lime scooters dropped distinctively across the U.S. in 2020 compared to 2019.
Chart of Bird and Lime average daily active users per month in the U.S.
Ideation
We created journey maps of the user's current journey and their desired journey, with this information we created a user flow for the app and a paper prototype to rapid user test.
Jenn’s Current Journey
We reviewed the current process of renting bikes in Venice in order to identify user pain points and opportunities. Based on the information obtained in the interviews, we created a journey map to understand the customers’ experience when renting a bike. We divided their journey into different stages and we asked them how they felt on each stage.
Jenn’s rental experience without RideSafe Venice.
Jenn’s rental experience with RideSafe Venice.
Jenn’s Journey with RideSafe
Thanks to feedback received, we were able to understand the pain points of customers, which helped consider the changes we needed to make to improve their experience, we created a journey map that reflected them.
User Flow
After ideating the experience we wanted users to have, we constructed a simple flowchart to outline the process a user would go through, to rent a bike using our app. This user flow served as foundation to our prototype.
RideSafe Venice app user flow.
RideSafe Venice app paper prototype.
Paper Prototype
We continued by creating a paper prototype that followed our user flow and that showed some of the key interface elements we were planning to design.
Results
Based on the feedback we got from user testing, we discovered that we needed to make a quick way to sign up, be transparent about the sanitation process and give users the option to rent multiple vehicles.
App prototype screenshots highlighting support for small businesses.
Supports Small Businesses
RideSafe supports small businesses because it allows users to search, check out rental shops' contact info and pricing, leave reviews, and visually see how the stores look and what they offer through the app.
Quick and Simple Sign-Up
RideSafe allows a quick and simple sign-up process for users. Users just have to scan their id, set up their payment, and review terms and conditions. It also allows users to set up their ride preferences for contactless seat adjustments. The great part of this setup is they can always review or change them later in account settings.
App prototype screenshots highlighting the
quick and simple sign-up process.
App prototype screenshots highlighting safety, sanitization, and contactless order features.
Safe, Sanitized & Contactless
The app also shows users how each bike rental shop is sanitizing vehicles and what precautions they are taking to keep them safe. It also allows them to schedule completely contactless curbside pickups and returns.
Competitive Analysis
We designed our app to stand out from competitors, so we implemented features that the biggest competitors were missing and could not provide to riders, like sanitized vehicles, selection of custom vehicles, rental of multiple devices, and scheduled pickups.
RideSafe features against competitors.
Prototype
Reflections
When times change it is important to be able to adapt, the pandemic changed the way we do many things. Small rental shops in Venice had a hard time adapting to these changes and this was a big reason many were losing customers. It was important to talk to users and discover their needs and pain points of the current rental processes of Venice rental shops because it made me realize that there was a big opportunity to improve their service.
It would be interesting if we continued to pursue the development of this app and allow small businesses to access this infrastructure to improve their service and increase customers because our solution is not only useful during the pandemic but it adapts the services of these businesses to meet the needs of their current customers.
Some of the next steps to continue developing this project would be to develop this app as a website to be more cost effective and work with a couple of partner shops to get real life insights of the effectiveness of the process and metrics of customer satisfaction and rental increase.
Rachael and I made a great team and I’m glad we were both passionate about this project and finding a solution to a real problem. What we learned in this project will help us in the future because now we know that as designers we also have to adapt to changes and learn how to design for new needs.