Improving the experience of finding bikes.

xie pengcheng(4257499)

Design goal
Helping people find the paking place of their bike more easy.(former one)

Improving the experience of finding bikes.(current)

Interaction vision
Making the process of find bikes more interesting and funny.(former one) Making the process of find bikes with cute experience(current)

The conclusion about former research activities .

In the cycle one, i have done several researchs and design interventions(vibration ,light and sound). They are also mainly about how to tackle this problems directly. It seems that every method has it advantages and disadvantages, but they are all efficient . while thoes method did not give the tested people a very pleasent experience, it can only solve this problem. Therefore, in the cycle2 ,i tried to specify and optimize my design goal and intervention ,and made some new ideas about giving users a experience of cute.

The creative section

At the begining of this cycle, i made a creative section with my buddies. They gave me some contributioning ideas about find bikes by the way of mapping.

Analyse about the fromer interview one more time

i reanalyse the former interview data. there was a extra finding that a large proportion of the people do not totally forget the parking location, they can always remmber

what is the role play about In this cycle i made a design intervention which was very related with my new interaction vision, and i implemented it in the train station parking lot with my buddies. The idea was i made a fake tail in the rear of the bicycle, and when people near their bikes(or call the name of the bike), the tail will wave like a lovely pet.i tested this design tool in the train station parking lot,and i tested it twice with different people(with sophie and anna). The outcome is the tested people can find her bike by the clue of waving tail, but they did not feel this experience is cute or funny. They also did not like to find their bike by calling their, it makes them feel very uncomfortable.

Role play

the role play at delft train station

the motion of the fake tail

Analysis about the role play

Actually, at first ,i felt very disappointed about the outcome of the role play .But after analysis, i feel some bad factor lead to this dissatisfied result and probably i can find ways to optimize this idea. 1. The postive part is the two tested people can find her bikes via tail efficiently. 2. The negative part is they did not arouse a feeling of cute or funny. I think the main reasons are: 1)The fake tail i made is too rough, it really not like a real tail. 2)The way of weaving tail is too clumsy. And the reason why they did not like to find their bike by calling their bikes name is the parking lot is public place ,other people would feel very weird. One addition finding, even user did not think this tool is cute, but they were all like to touch the fake tail when they found it. Maybe i can use in the next test.

The way i want to optimize tailin the next cycle

As i wrote in the analysis, there are two mian reasons lead to the dissatisfied result. Therefore, i want to improve those two properties first. 1) make the tail more like a cute tail which pets have. 2) Doing some research about how does animal weave their tails. 3) Add addional funtion in order to make it more meaningful.

Other possibilities
From the lastest tutor meeting, i think i can change the ineraction version in order to broard my horizon. Therefore if i stuck intail, i would change my interactionversion to make some new ideas. one possible idea is there is label of face on the upper place of parking spot, when you approach to your bike.

Conclusion

In this cycle, i was trying to find a reasonable and interesting idea to deep, and i think tailis a great idea which has possibility to achieve my design goal and interaction vision. So i want to continue with this idea in the next cycle. For i have made a analysis about how did my test fail, i want to improve my design tool first. i think i will take thoes aspects into my consideration. 1.material; material would play a very important part in my design, for it can really help me give user a feeling of cute. 2.The different interaction activities in the diverse situation. The tailwould make different interactive ,for instance, if user want to find his/her bicycle in the night, thetailwould glow. During the research of design intervention, i also find some possibilities that can improve other experience during bicycling, like this tail can become a cushion, when a person want to sit at the rear of the bike.