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. Spoked values the sheer joy of biking rather than speed, calories, or saving the environment; although, we can’t deny these effects.

Through the service, members choose a color to paint their city and track the rides they take. These rides, which become one’s personal drawing of a city, are beautifully visualized on a communal map where they can be compared with friends.

In addition to this very visual feedback of tracking, Paint Your City will host social challenges that give people a fun and social excuse to either start biking, or to push them to explore more of their city on two wheels. These challenges are designed to happen within a physical workplace, between friends and for members across the entire platform.

Paint Your City will cultivate a bike culture in cities, because it’s simply the best way to get around. It will launch in New York, and could even become part of the bike share system arriving this spring.

Throughout the months, our thesis project has expanded and contracted with ideas; mainly expanded. Though, our challenge all along has been to get more people biking. A break and space away from it has, thankfully, brought us clarity.

As explained in our initial project description written in September (2011), the concept was once very focused on a physical bike helmet embedded speakers, buttons, sensors and a microphone:

Our project addresses the needs of urban pedalers. New Yorkers bike in chaotic environments. We want to make riders’ trips more seamless while giving them tools to delightfully experience and discover New York from their bike seat and with friends. We’re making a digital toolset embodied in a physical bike helmet. It will provide spoken directions, track riding habits and help riders document trips and arrange rides with friends. Unlike a high-tech GPS bike computer, it will have a charming personality and be designed for the casual and committed commuters.

An endeavor that is part of the SVA IxD thesis program, we hope to create your bike’s better half.

The project continued to involve the helmet throughout the entire semester. But, in October (2011), we decided to design a game, called King of Two Wheels, to explore our concepts around motivation, wayfinding, tracking, and discovery within a city. Hosting this game throughout a week in our studio got us more interested in the shared work environment as the focus for intervention. We iterated further on this idea through developing office game kits, and digital communal maps to be projected on the office wall.

At the end of last semester, the project was filled with opportunities and features—from receiving spoken directions and bookmarking places during a ride to competing for miles and new places with fellow workers. Then, we each took a very deep breath and a three week break to our respective homes, Oslo and Missouri/Texas.

We returned to New York and realized that, rather than adding capabilities to the bike ride itself, the project should focus on how to motivate people while they are not on their bike seat. We believe and have seen the power of data tracking on a communal map, and will leverage this idea as the core of the project. It’s called Paint Your City.

We presented our public interfaces project last week. We talked about the social tracking platform we want to make for thesis, as well as one potential game challenge that could be hosted in workplaces. The offices would be able to order small game kits, get excited about a 2 week bike challenge, and cheer each other on to try to win over other companies as well as try to beat their co-workers internally. We had fun through making felt icons, posters and game rule books, and the presentation went very well. Yes, there were some changes to be made, but no matter people understood that we love biking, that we want it to spread, and that we believe in spreading it through emphasizing the joy of biking rather than calories burnt or environment saved. Some people even said GO MAKE THE THING! Yay.

Then something broke. Not sure exactly why or how. We went back to the drawing board. We put post-its on the wall and stared at them for 12 hours. We put post-it on cafe tables, and got more frustrated than ever. I felt we were back to where we were at a few months ago – throwing potential features up on the wall.

But this time we did the brainstorm without any joy or playfulness, and we presented some slides we were not even sure we believed in for our thesis work group final presentation. And that’s where we’re at. After having had the most wonderful and eventful semester at SVA IxD so far, we’re all of a sudden confused, clueless and burnt out. It sucks being there when Winter break is upon us.

We still know we want to get people to bike more. We still believe we can do it through playfulness and fun. And we believe in the power of delightful interaction design. But will there be a talking helmet? Or a device to plug on to the helmet? Will it have speakers, mic, a button? What is the button for? Can you add voice notes while biking? Can you add text notes when done biking? Can you hear notes when biking, or is that distracting and dangerous? Can you share your notes with others, or is it a private thing? What is the social in the social tracking platform? What would you share with everyone, what would you share with friends, and what would you keep to yourself (twitter vs. diary)? Can we rely on tracking alone–as long as our communication of the gathered data is different than the fitness-focused competitors like RunKeeper and Strava? Can the added flavor to the platform be through various challenges, rather than in the everyday experience?

Maybe we just need a long break. Judging by the content in this blog, and the amounts of content that didn’t even make it in here, cause we’ve been to busy, I think we actually do deserve it! Happy Holidays to whoever made it this far down a page filled with frustration :)

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.