RiderLink
role
UI, UX, Research, Mobile
client
Private Client
year
2020
Overview
RiderLink is a motorcyclist social meet-up mobile app that aims to revolutionize the social motorcycle experience.
The Challenge
RiderLink aimed to be the one-stop-shop for motorcyclists who wanted to navigate and socialize, ultimately competing directly with other navigation apps such as Waze and Google Maps as well as established motorcycling Facebook groups and other apps, such as Rever. RiderLink’s main features were to include real-time geo location of other motorcyclists on your map and the ability to create events to coordinate trips with other riders.
Creative Process
1. Research
Because of the short timeline on this project, the Bytelion team had to forgo their traditional design sprint approach. Instead, we focused our efforts on an internal discovery period that lasted about one week. I began by collaborating with another designer on the team to tailor a user research survey to our target market (motorcyclists). Once the survey was sent out, we worked on a competitive market analysis while we awaited our survey results. The competitive market analysis revealed that RiderLink had market validation, but it would be competing heavily with many other mobile apps that already had adoption. However, there were a few features that would allow RiderLink to stand out above the rest including its event planning and the ability to see other users and friends on the map in real-time.
Once the survey results came in, we learned that users are mainly interested in matching with other riders based on compatibility such as age, safety habits, and riding style, rather than strangers. Additionally, user safety and privacy was a leading concern and riders wanted to learn more about other riders before connecting. Most notably, respondents indicated that coordinating schedules is a frustration when they want to ride impulsively and also ride with others. Lastly, over 80% of respondents said that they connect with groups via text messages or existing connections.
What this data told us was that RiderLink should focus its features around user safety and privacy, finding ways to connect riders by relevancy and build trust between connections using rider profiles. Additionally, we saw an opportunity to encourage users to stay in the app when they connect with groups by designing an in-app messaging feature. With this data, we were able to build three user personas that we feel accurately described our target audience.
2. Discovery
After the user research and personas were complete, we used that information to create red routes and user flows around with the concept product features. The red routes showed us that the most important features would be the user’s ability to search for active local riders, browse local events, and send messages. We then created user task flows with all of the features from the red routes that we would use to inform our information architecture and wireframes.
3. Visual & Experience Design
After our research and discovery was completed, we moved on to creating low-fidelity wireframes that would bring our research-driven ideas to a visual playing field. I led the wireframe effort, mentoring and assisting my team with wireframe creation and UI best practices while another designer on the team took responsibility for creating the wireframes based on the user flows. Our low-fidelity wireframes visualized a few main features that were optimized based on the data we collected. For example, because users valued safety and privacy above all else, other competing apps do not allow users to see other non-friend users on the map. RiderLink followed in their footsteps for the MVP, but we plan on adding a delayed real-time geolocation feature that shows users on the map in real-time with a 2-minute delay to protect the user's location and privacy. However, we did not just follow in the competitor’s footsteps. We did even better. We allowed users to see their friends real-time geolocation on the map but they can also see other active local users (non-friends) in a list view, protecting the location of other users.
After several four iterations of low-fidelity wireframes, we were finally ready to move on to the high-fidelity wireframes. I led the effort of creating the high-fidelity wireframes and leading the meetings with the stakeholder for feedback that would drive several iterations. The high-fidelity wireframes included the RiderLink brand and visual style throughout the app, including colors, fonts and custom iconography.
Results
The RiderLink mobile app will be available on both the Google Play and Apple App Stores in June 2020. The data-driven design of this app’s experience and it's beautifully tailored interface should prove to be a welcome addition to the motorcycling community, with its main new-to-the-market feature that allows users to plan events and share them with the public RiderLink community in order to quickly and easily meet new people to ride with.The new logo accurately represented the brand's values and appealed to their target audience. The business reported increased website traffic and social media engagement, and the logo was featured in several local publications.
