We make riders' behaviors change to improve the bike distribtion in National Tsing Hua University.

This research takes the bike sharing of National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) as a case to propose a bike sharing solution on campus.

The share bike in NTHU is called T-bike. Due to the incomplete planning of sharing system by the T-bike team self-organized by students in NTHU, main problems arose are the extremely uneven distribution of T-bike, and the difficulty in finding bikes. Based on the research methods such as contextual inquiry and user-centered design process, this study induces the needs and behavior patterns of users through the personas, designing a sharing system and a smooth service journey.

The sharing system includes three major services: planning dockless parking areas, providing reservations, setting rewarding station. The service journey includes two major touchpoints, which are our mobile app and the bikes. Through the good usability and interaction design of the app and bikes, we have developed a well-experienced operation process. The evaluations found that the system and service journey design above can indeed solve previous T-bike problems.

// Challenges

・School policy is strict, and staffs are not willing to cooperate

・The service should stay free, so the cost shouldn't be too high to afford for T-bike team

・To let users move the bike along the steep terrain, we need to make their behavior change

// Competitor Analysis

Bike Sharing has always been a hot topic, and similar services on campus or in the city has their own strengths and weaknesses. After doing desktop research (non-intrusive research), we concluded that dockless and free of charge will be our strength.

// Contextual Inquiry

​Contextual inquiry is a common qualitative approach in which we conducted six semi-structured interviews to understand the users' behaviors and motivation behind them in order to discover their needs. After the interview, we also conducted a field observation of T-bike users to ensure that there was no detail or possible needs are ignored.

// Behavior Analysis & Persona

In order to fully understand the specific behavior of the users, we classify T-bike Riders and T-Bike Team's behavior-related statements by using empathy map, and then use affinity analysis to divide into two groups of behavior patterns. Combining with demand analysis, we created two T-Bike riders and one T-bike team persona.

// Customer Journey Map & Service Blueprint

In order to observe and understand the interaction between users and service providers at a higher level, we set up the service journey map of both parties and then use service blueprint to mark the interaction between each other, the touch points and their respective support systems, to organize and present the service system in a visualizing way.

// Define

In the final stage of convergence, we think that while increasing the number of repairers can solve the problem of bike number and solve the pain points of users and T-bike at the same time. But if the problem of uneven distribution of vehicles is not solved, the bikes will only be able to meet the needs of students in specific areas. Therefore, we decided to give priority to solving the problem of bike distribution.

// Brainstorming

We created a relaxed, open, fast-paced environment for brainstorming and limited the ideas to the affinity diagram's themes to enhance the validity, supplemented by the pains and gains charted by empathy map, we mapped the value fit, and finally selected the points that we thought were important through voting in three dimensions: feasible, interesting and surprising.

// Storyboard & Script

Through texts and sketches, we connect our ideas and create new service journeys through story-telling, to form a team consensus and become a script for concept communication, so that we can convey design concepts to others.

// Information Architecture & User Flow

We use card sorting to categorize what users think should be in the same place. This approach allows the product's information architecture to fit the user's mental model. Finally, by integrating the sequence and steps of customer journey and function usage, we can draw user flow and chart out how users will use our service.

// Prototyping

We first built paper prototype and had 15 peer reviews to gather ideas for improvement. We therefore modified some of the original system design and produced hi-fi prototype.

Finally, our service system includes：

・An APP providing functioning interfaces and sending notifications to the users.

・Reformed T-bikes equipped with a GPS tracker and a indicator light (let the users notice their reserved T-bikes, also show the renting status).

・Policies of parking areas, bike reservation points, and rewarding station.

// Paper Prototype & Peer Review

Both of these method are to quickly produce tangible concept and find obvious problems of the concept. We first built paper prototype and had 15 peer reviews to gather ideas for improvement.

// Cognitive Walkthrough

CW is a fast pace usability testing method, combining with think aloud method, we can gain abundant qualitative data. Instead of setting up in the laboratory, we went to real field to make our user feel the context more realistic.

// Conclusion

​The main contribution of this research is to solve three problems of T-bike via the APP. First of all, due to lack of T-bike, it is not easy to find a T-bike. This study provides the function of finding a bicycle through GPS positioning. Second, the mountain bike is too scarce for students to borrow. Therefore, this study addresses the issue of uneven bicycle resource allocation in different terrain and encourages students to assist with the removal of bicycles to improve their uneven distribution through priority booking. Thirdly, in the past T-bike, because there was no mechanism to control the bicycle well, we provided a standard reservation procedure and the division of the parking area so that the user could borrow the T-bike under a limited standard.