Bike rush helps bicycle commuters and enthusiasts repair & service their bikes in less than 24 hours

Example of the final product.
Results
Product development from design to launch in three weeks.
120 services successfully completed in two weeks.
$4,200USD in revenue.
Tools & frameworks
Qualitative & quantitative research.
Lean Ux.
Wireframing.
Prototyping.
Product development.
My role
Co-founder & product designer.

General information

In 2020 the bicycle industry started to experience staggering growth. Globally people are buying more bicycles than ever before, generating an industry growth of 48% in less than a year. Even though the biggest markets are European and Asian countries, Mexico is experiencing similar growth in its internal market too.

The problem

It is difficult to take your bike to a mechanic or bike shop, especially if you don't have a truck, bike rack, or if your bicycle is your main mean of transportation

Objective & role

As a co-founder and product designer, I was responsible for fundamental research, prototyping, developing & testing our web application, and getting our first 100 users.

User research

Problem hypothesis

As a cyclist commuter and mountain bike enthusiast, I had to take my bike to a bike shop for maintenance or repair services at least once a month. For me, this task was very uncomfortable for one main reasons:

Initial hypothesis
It is difficult for a cyclist commuter/enthusiast to take his bike to a bike shop when they don't have a suitable vehicle for bike transportation.

Qualitative research

Our goal was to validate our problem hypothesis by talking to potential users to identify if they had experienced the same frustrations.

Method & execution
To be sure we were getting reliable data, I decided to have 1 to 1 personal conversations with three types of cyclists: (mountain bikers, road cyclists, and casual cyclists).
‍
I also decided to have these conversations in real scenarios, so for mountain bikers, I went to mountain biking parks, for road cyclists I hang out with them on cycling groups, and for casuals, I went to city parks.
‍
My goal was to have ten conversations with each type of cyclist to generate an empathy map for each type of user.
Findings
There are similar jobs to be done and frustrations between mountain bikers and road bikers. The casual biker doesn't care much for his bicycle maintenance.
Example of empathy maps created with our research.

Quantitative research

The goal was to understand if the problems we learned about during our qualitative research replicate for a significant amount of cyclists.

Method
  1. Look and participate in cycling groups. These are groups of people with at least 50 members who get together and ride once a week.
  2. Ask questions in social media groups and see if they generate engagement and responses.
Findings
In social media groups, I found people asking for bike shop referrals and maintenance tips. In cycling groups, I found that people were having difficulties making time to take their bikes to the shop. In some cases, people coordinate pick ups between group members to collect several bikes and take them to the shop.
Image of mountain biking event, taken during research.

User personas

We realized that there were two types of persona with very similar goals and frustrations. Cyclists that are serious about the sport tend to care about the conditions of their bikes for safety and performance reasons and get frustrated if their bikes aren't available for the weekend's rides.

Example of road cycling persona.
Example of mountain biker persona.

Define

User journey

We created a journey map to identify improvement opportunities within the steps and task the user has to do to take a bike to the shop and get it ready for the next ride.

Findings
We saw that cyclists were experiencing a lot of friction in each step, especially after scheduling an appointment. From this step forward, the user started to feel stress for transporting the bike to the shop and back home, anxiety while waiting for the bike to be ready, and sadness for missing a weekend ride.
Image of user journey map.

Pain points & Problem statement

1

Lack of time and vehicle to take their bike to the bike shop.

2

Not having their bike available for weekend rides.

3

Distrust of bike shops

Mariana is a cyclist who needs help taking her bike to the shop for maintenance and repair services because she doesn't have a vehicle suited for bicycle transportation.

Ideate

How might we

We decided to use the HMW approach to reframe the user needs as questions we can prioritize and solve.
Image of critical "how might we" questions.

Crazy Eights

Now that we have a better understanding of our user's needs and turned them into opportunities, we decided to continue with a crazy eight exercises to decide what to build.

Results
We decided to create a web app with the following features:
Schedule bicycle maintenance and repair services within the app to eliminate the need to search for and call different shops.
Bicycle pick up and drop off service to eliminate the transportation issue for the user.
In-house bicycle maintenance and repair service performed by Bike Rush to ensure quality.

Prototyping

Goal Statement

Our solution will help users maintain and service their bicycles without having to take their bikes to the shop by themselves, which will affect bicycle enthusiasts who don't have the time or vehicle to make the trip.

We will measure effectiveness by the number of daily and weekly services performed.

User flows & wireframes

We started our prototyping phase by creating user flows. Our goal was to determine the actions and decisions users would have to make within the app.
Image of wireframes.

Lo-Fi prototypes

After creating our user flows and storyboards to guide our design processes, we continue with Lo-Fi prototypes. Our goal is to test these prototypes with end-users and gather feedback focused on functionality before advancing to a Hi-Fi prototype.
Image of Lo-Fi prototype flow.

To be continue

Next update, Design: 19/11/2021

I'd love to hear from you!

If you found something interesting about my work, have any questions or would like to chat, feel free to contact me through any of these channels. It would be a pleasure to help!

Email
rodolfopenagosruiz@gmail.com
Phone
+52 (33) 2055 2603
linkedin iconInstagram icon.Twitter icon

I'm a product designer who has built 3 startups that didn't take off, which taught me to understand and empathize with users' pain points and business KPIs to develop products users would love and drive growth for the company.