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Overview
Citi Bike is a public bicycle sharing system in New York City. As a central and, at times, sole source of information about the entire Citi Bike system, the physical kiosk located at each bike station explains how the system works. Amy Wu and I redesigned the informational panel on the front of each kiosk to be a universal how-to guide for the Citi Bike system.
The final design was installed on the 330+ kiosks throughout New York City and ridership amongst one-time users increased by 14% (compared to the previous month). Our work was featured in the New York Times Magazine.
Citi Bike Information Design
Role & Employer
Completed with one other designer, Amy Wu, for Motivate (operators of Citi Bike)
Challenge: We were asked to find high impact and low effort interventions to improve Citi Bike's user experience. New York City is home to and a destination for people from all over the world and the Citi Bike system is meant to serve all of them, no matter what language they speak or whether they're using a bike to commute or for a joy ride. The original design required speaking english well enough to read through many written directions.
Solution: Through a holistic design process we determined that redesigning the main informational panel of the kiosk would be a low cost and minimally invasive update to implement on the system already installed across New York City. To create a design universally approachable, we translated text into an informational table and illustrations.
We performed primary research, observing and interviewing customers while they took out a bike for the first time and found that first time users had difficulty at every stage of taking out a bike. It was clear that the panel needed to be completed stripped down and redesigned with very clear step-by-step instructions.
We identified how to build a better information architecture through clearly delineating steps and improved legibility with a illustrated visual design language. Each design iteration was tested in the field with prototypes and questionnaires.
The final design focused on illustrations that walk users through the bike rental process, condensing and translating what had been large blocks of text into universally understood directions and pricing table.
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