The map below demonstrates the people, places and things that have a stake is your decision to bike.

In my thesis workgroup, we are using a story model to help us delineate the intervention we are making with the thesis project. This is a second take on it.

WHY: What if your city felt smaller and your experience of it felt bigger?

Our reasons are: to spread the joys of biking, to contribute toward human super-powered (better) lifestyles and healthy environments, to help people overcome the personal barriers to riding for transportation, to move toward a cultural shift in the way we navigate and experience our cities

WHO: city dwellers with under-utilized bikes; these people can be defined by three personas:

The leisure rider ( the ‘not yet convinced’) —“I ride my bike around my neighborhood and outside of the city, but it’s not really a transportation mode for me.”

The casual commuter—“I ride around my neighborhood and to work occasionally. It’s my secondary mode of transportation.”

The committed commuter—“I ride my bike to work every day. It’s my primary mode of transportation.”

WHAT: It is a movement to get people to discover and further embrace their human superpowers by biking for transportation. It takes the form of a service paired with a physical product that equips and encourages riders. The physical product is a talking helmet that tracks your rides the moment you put your helmet on, works as a remote for you to bookmark places and events realtime while riding, and helps you find your way in moments where you are lost.

WHEN/WHERE: during a ride, before and after a ride, ‘hunger moments’, planning periods

WHO BY: creators, bike nerd developers, bike community

HOW: mobile application, physical bike helmet, website

We are designing an Office Bike Challenge. Above is an initial idea about how the scoring could be structured. The four different activity types allow for various levels of engagement for bikers and non-bikers alike.

ELEVATOR PITCH
Paint Your City is a social tracking platform with game challenges that motivates people to ride their bikes. It’s for city dwellers with under-utilized bikes who have a need to maintain a busy and active lifestyle and get around their city.

Unlike tracking apps that are exercise-focused (Runkeeper and NikePlus), our service caters to the unique way that a biker experiences the city. In addition to tracking while riding, bikers can bookmark places and events, unlock secrets from fellow riders, be cheered on by friends, and get directions spoken to them. This narrative is visualized on a city map individually or as part of a bigger bike story.

GOAL AND RATIONALE
Our goal is to get people excited and curious about biking, and to provide a way for people to encourage each other to use their bike more for getting around the city.

We will achieve this by giving the user voluntary challenges (initiated by self, friends or their workplace) to push themselves to bike more as well as recruit others to get on their bikes. We are providing consistent feedback on their progress, and enhancing the in-ride experience.

We decided to shift our focus to motivation. While we want to have live voice directions as a feature, tracking is the key component. Rather than only a device, we are making a movement; A movement toward getting more people to discover their human superpowers through biking. What does this mean? Well, we feel alive and empowered by biking and want to spread the love. In other words, we want to build a movement to get more people to bike. It will be a game-like platform consisting of a website, mobile app, sensing and talking helmet, and game challenges in which the city is the game board.

PAINTING THE CITY
Our audience are those not yet convinced of biking as a primary mode of transportation as well as the casual and committed commuters. Through riding and tracking their rides, they can make a visual mark on the city map. They would simply be painting the city through the trips they take on their bike with their chosen game color. The website will be dominated by visualizations of rides. Riders’ tracking activity is displayed, and comparisons can be made between friends, neighbors and strangers.

GAME CAMPAIGNS
Bikers can simply share their own visual bike story through tracking. However, a biker can also make their everyday rides more interesting and motivating by initiating game challenges between their friends. Games at both small and large scales can be hosted. Games involving a group of people would be more like campaigns challenging individuals to team up, ride more and explore their cities. These campaigns can last for a short or long period of time, and can be hosted within social networks or physical workplaces.

TRACKING AND PINNING
Tracking should be a consistent activity where every ride is recorded by the app. To ensure consistency, the start and stop will be triggered automatically by a sensor in the helmet. Along with the tracking sensor, the talking helmet will facilitate digital marking and remembering places or moments on a ride with the ‘pin’ button. This button is also an open framework for other connections to be made between bikers. However, the helmet is not required for riders to participate. We hope to allow for people to use earbuds with a button to provide an experience somewhat similar to that provided by the helmet. We want the barrier to entry to be low, so the only piece required to participate is the app.

With this shift, we believe the magic lies in telling your bike story through data-tracking, comparing data, getting to know your neighbors and in building culture through a community of people riding their bikes.