Empowering Casual Bicycle Consumers

                Local Bike Shops have seen a lot of business lately, as the bicycle boom that began with the COVID-19 pandemic continues. They are also great places to buy bicycles, learn about them, and get more involved in your local cyclist community. However, they are spaces that casual consumers looking to purchase a new bicycle often do not feel welcome in. My research showed this was for a few main reasons:

To address this issue and make customers feel more comfortable in the LBS space and more capable of buying a bike right for them, I focused on discovering the barriers in communication between LBS employees and customers, and preparing them to overcome these barriers. I decided to do this within a mobile app experience the user would download and use for a short period of time before going to a bike shop.

This section is all about gaining information from the user, and using that information to set up the education section. So far it has not been the primary focus but it is serving important purposes:
•Narrowing down the information the user is presented with
•Giving an emotional connection to the bike the user is learning about
•Learning what the user prioritizes

🠔Q1 to the left is an example of a question gaining lateral info about the user, connecting their taste in cars to their taste in bicycles

This section has been the primary focus, and will be more in depth and a little longer than the previous question section. It’s main purposes are to:
•Teach the user about a specific recommended bicycle
•Order information presented to the user ranked by the user’s priority
•Introduce technical terms about the bicycle that are useful to know when visiting an LBS
• Create a conversation like style for a casual and user-led learning experience
• Provide 3 main takeaways: Identification, Basic Information, and Communication Encouragement

🠔 E1 to the left is the introduction to the bicycle type recommended to the user, in this case a Beach Cruiser, giving them the tools to identify this type of bicycle (what its called, what it looks like)

1: User downloads and uses application before going to bike shop.
2: User heads to local bike shop to purchase a new bike.
3: User quickly and easily identifies type of bicycle they want to purchase to LBS clerk.
4 & 5: User does not know some information, but feels confident to ask the LBS clerk to learn
more.
6 & 7: User uses the basic knowledge they learned to help ask question and decide between two
bikes.
8 & 9: User purchases desired bicycle and takes it on an enjoyable ride home!

Primary

• Interviews with casual consumers about their experiences with bikes
• Activities looking at how causal consumers identify and assess bikes on first visual glance
• Observations of an LBS shopping experience with a casual consumer
• Interview with luxury car salesperson
• Defamiliarization activities

Secondary

• Comparative analysis of companies bike finder quizzes
• Article reviews discussing toxic culture within bike shops
• Article reviews about selling cars

“…sometimes u sound like a kid saying sketchers will make u run faster lol”

-A friend commenting on what he finds annoying when I talk about bicycles as an expert communicating with a casual consumer

Round 1 screens and bodystorming

Round 2 screens and clickable prototype

Questions

Education

“Dot” is a “little dude” within the application, that when activated by the user adds more detail in full sentences. This does a few things:

• Gives user the context behind some technical terms
• Introduces them to other terms/lingo they might encounter in an LBS
• Positive language encourages user