CASE STUDY:

Wing

upgrading the personal public transportation experience

Project for General Assembly UX

The Idea:

At an urban planning meeting in San Jose:

Goal: discuss the future of the city

Main cause of concern from attendees: the “scooter issue”

Presenters (city employees) offered no solutions

My idea came from an urban planning meeting I attended in San Jose. Their goal was to discuss the future of the city.

But the conversation was dominated by people who wanted to know how the city was going to solve the “scooter issue.” The presenters really had no answers.

Because I think there are many benefits to e-scooters in my city, I thought the “scooter issue” would be a great topic to explore for this project.

I talked to 3 people about their e-scooter usage and what was overwhelmingly clear was that people were concerned about safety.

From the information I collected I came up with this problem statement:

How can e-Scooter companies deliver a safer, community-driven product? How can they make riders feel and be safer?

How can e-Scooter companies deliver a safer, community-driven product? How to make riders feel and be safer users?

  • Residents are frustrated by users who ride on sidewalks park e-scooters in walkways, and add to “urban clutter”

  • E-scooter companies face opposition and road blocks because of a lack of safety oversight and user control

  • Finding a way to improve safety in their products and create organized approaches to parking and deployment will help repair their reputations.

What I learned

my take aways

Users feel safer with bike lane access

  • Better safety features = more users

  • Seen as very functional in urban environments despite drawbacks

my false assumptions

Parking hubs are a good idea

Negative community reputation

Here’s what I learned from my interviews.

Users feel safer with bike lane access, and that’s good because most e-scooter companies claim that protected lane access reduces accidents by 90%

Better safety features = more users.

Scooters are seen as very functional in urban environments. They fill an important need for close-range transportation while reducing reliance on automobiles.

I also made some false assumptions.

I assumed that my users would be interested in having central parking hubs to make locating and parking a scooter easier. Everyone shot this down saying that it defeated the easy-access business model.

I expected a general negativity surrounding e-scooters. I was wrong. Even the non-user I interviewed had many positive things to say about e-scooters.

Shockingly, all three people I spoke with (NEXT) knew someone who had been hurt or even killed in an e-scooter accident.