UI/UX DESIGN
Rota
DATE
November 2022
(2 week sprint)
TOOLS
Figma, Google Surveys
MY ROLE
Hi-Fi Prototype Lead, Project Mentor
AWARDED
Best Visual Design
From daily commutes to leisurely rides, biking is a popular mode of transportation used by students and faculty members at UC Davis. Although convenient for travel, bikers have to deal with bike parts getting stolen, flat tires or broken parts, and even accidents. Rota is an app that is designed to optimize the biking experience in Davis especially when faced with these situations.
Rota was the result of a 2-week design sprint at UC Davis in 2022 with Design Interactive’s Fellowship. Through a meticulous synthesis of research, ideations, testing, and prototyping in Figma, we created a high-fidelity prototype of an application that seeks to provide a reliable and secure platform for rental purchases, which reduces stressors while saving users money.
THE CHALLENGE
How might we create a digital platform where bikers at UC Davis can receive aid and advice?
MEET THE TEAM
MY ROLE
Each of us lead one section of the project based on our background and familiarity with UX Design or User Research. Because this project was part of Design Interactive’s Fellowship program, many of the participants in the design sprint were new to UX Design and had little to no background in it. As a result, I was the project mentor of the group because I was the only team member who had experience with the UX Design process through classwork and other extracurriculars. For me, this included explaining a lot of the UX Design process and how to do some of the steps within that process such as affinity mapping , creating user personas, and using figma to create wireframes and hi-fi prototypes.
Research
USERS + AUDIENCE
The target audience and users of this app are UC Davis students as well as other Davis residents that regularly use their bicycle as a mode of transportation.
SURVEY
We conducted a survey and sent it out to current UC Davis students through social media, class discord channels, and Canvas emails.
Out of the 27 respondents:
41% reported having their bike stolen
41% have had issues with fixing their bike
30% are frustrated with the lack of awareness in bike rules and safety
48% prefer to fix their bikes by themselves
USER INTERVIEWS
We conducted 4 user interviews with students at UC Davis.
Radence reported having difficulty finding safe, efficient, and smooth bike roads
Ella said that she likes to bike to school for the exercise but finds it difficult to find routes she likes and track calories from her bike rides
Austin recalled a time when he spent hours trying to find ways to fix his bike after getting into a bike accident
Stephanie mentioned how she bikes every day even though she has a car, but dislikes the difficulty of having to repair her bike on her own.
AFFINITY MAPPING
With the information from the survey and interviews, we gathered our data and insights together with an affinity map to identify the key pain points that users faced with the current bike experience in Davis. We grouped our findings together to find similar themes.
Key Pain Points Identified:
Bike parts are stolen often
Bikes themselves are stolen even when they are locked
There is a lack of knowledge about bike etiquette/rules
Repairs are too costly
Bikers need more information on routes in Davis
Fixing a bike can be time consuming and costly
USER PERSONAS
We compiled our findings from our user research surveys and interviews to create multiple user personas based on our target audience. We focused on the different ages and roles of campus and community members. We also noted that responses from upperclassmen who had more experience biking were different from freshmen, so we split their personas to keep in mind the different priorities of each as we developed Rota. We used the key pain points we identified earlier to also make a note of each of their goals based on the needs communicated by our respondents while making sure to develop motivations for each of the users with our interview data.
RESEARCH CONCLUSION
After completing our user research, we identified 4 key problems we wanted to identify in the design of the Rota app.
Assist bikers with learning how to fix their bikes on their own
Develop a way to respond to bike-related theft and help bikers take preventative measures to avoid bike theft
Help new bikers learn the rules of the road for biking
Make safe biking routes accessible to users
Ideation + Early Prototypes
Before jumping into putting together the app on Figma, I went through some processes in order to gather layout ideas and other feature placement ideas for the app.
MORE AFFINITY MAPPING
After reviewing all of our user research and with our personas in mind, we spent 10 minutes formulating solutions and features that worked towards solving the pain points we had identified.
LOW-FIDELITY SKETCHES
After identifying some of the app’s key features through affinity mapping, we experimented with possible color patterns as well as sketched out what the features could look like on a screen.
WIREFRAMES
We then translated our sketches into a digital wireframe form. We started with basic wireframes with no color while focused on the overall layout of each of the chosen features. From there we continued to move on from wireframes and added color, but we received feedback after showing the design to some students who found our original color palette to be dull and washed out. After the feedback from the students, we changed our color palette and further iterated until we had our final design.
Final User Flows
At the end of the 2 weeks, we translated our wireframes into final hi-fi user flows.
FINDING A BIKE ROUTE
Through the Rota app, users can find bike routes based on the destination they want to go to and their current location. The app also allows users to see alerts such as accidents, recent crime, or poor lighting on the routed areas, alerting the users of potential safety concerns on the route which allows them to check alternative routes in order to ensure their safety. The user can also track how long it may take them to get to the location. This allows the user to find new bike routes to their destination and help them feel safer about the bike routes they choose.
TRACKING EXERCISE
The app also allows users to track their exercise through biking. The app allows them to set goals such as mile goals, and allows them to see their goal on the home page as the app tracks the milage of their biking routes. This enables users that want to bike for exercise to track their information and encourages them to meet their goals,
BIKE FIXING FAQ
Another feature is the bike repair FAQ. In our user research, we found that many users found it difficult to repair their bike and were worried about the costs of taking their bike into a shop. We worked to mediate this worry by creating a main FAQ page where users are able to search the problem they are having with their bike and find resources such as articles and videos of how to fix the bike themselves.
BIKING BASICS
Outcomes + Lessons
The current prototype was the result of a 2-week UX Design process using design thinking. Though we were able to make a hi-fi prototype, there are a lot of things that could be further flushed out. Unfortunately our team was struck with various challenges throughout the 2 weeks too, I caught COVID halfway through and another member had a family emergency. Due to this, we had some limitations with how much we could do by the deadline. If we were to continue this project, I would definitely want to conduct multiple rounds of user tests and implement changes based on those. We would have also liked to develop more screens for our prototype and implement more of the prototyping features on Figma for our hi-fi such as animated interactions.
This process was really interesting for me because I had the opportunity to step into a leadership and mentor role because most of my team had little to no experience with UX Design. I found it enjoyable to teach people about the UX process and introduce some of the methods to them. Doing this also put the design thinking process in another context for me, which taught me more things about UX Design as well. Overall I think this project contributed to my tool belt of design skills and has helped make me a better designer with a better understanding of UX Design.
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Made with <3 by Evelyn Huey