INTRO
Spot Dash displays the highest priority spots for potential new bike racks in Seattle. This simple website was developed during a 24 hour Hackathon to use "Data for Good". By utilizing the Yelp API and Seattle City GIS data, we have created a dashboard that displays busy restaurants that are far away from Seattle bike racks. This information can be used by the Bicycle Program Staff to prioritize new bike rack requests.
MY ROLE
Interaction, Interface, Visual Design, and Secondary Research.
Hackathon Length: 2 Business Days
Teammates: James Liu | Web Developer, Doug Klemp | Web Developer, Sam Chakerian | Data Scientist, Brendon Thatcher | UX Designer
PROCESS
1. Ideate
2. Research
3. Design and Develop
4. Pitch
IDEATION AND RESEARCH
The brief was simple: use data for good. How might we pull together something from scratch in 2 business days that will benefit others? My team and I started brainstorming topics we were passionate about and compared those to available data sources. After scoping down to the topic of safer bike routes and available bike racks, the developers began to work on accessing the data, I began researching the business angle, and another UX designer began sketching a preliminary mobile interface.
NEW BIKE RACKS
To understand the context of the problem (bike racks unavailable near busy bike routes and public spaces like restaurants), I began by researching the process of requesting and installing new racks. The process is rather simple: call or email the Seattle Bicycle Program staff and they will meet with the requesting individual or business. I decided to position this product as a way to prioritize potential locations for bike racks, so that the Bicycle Program can compare new requests to a prioritized list.
SPOT IMPROVEMENT PLAN
According to Seattle.gov, “the Bicycle Spot Improvement Plan installs bicycle racks in neighborhood business districts to encourage bicycling for short trips and errands. The racks provide safe and convenient bicycle parking.” Capitalizing on the mission of this program will help position our product as a way for this program to achieve its goals. Since our product will act as a dashboard for potential bike rack spots, we titled it “Spot Dash”.
DESIGN AND DEVELOP
I began the visual design by choosing a fun, bold, and accessible color palette. This was very important so that the product could appeal to the Spot Improvement Plan program. I worked on this while our other UX Designer sketched and tested a low fidelity mobile view. Due to constraints discovered by our developers, the design needed to pivot from a layout that required a longer development time in React. For the mockup, I adjusted the design to meet the front end constraints.
FIRST SKETCH
The first idea was to present the user with the option of clicking back and forth between a list or map view of the bike racks. Like I mentioned, the developers could not build this view quickly enough, so I pivoted to a list view with containers that would hold a thumbnail from Mapbox.
PITCH
I handed off my mockup and assets, and the developers finalized the demo for the pitch. I defended our concept and design decisions with great feedback and excitement from the hackathon judges and participants. The site is deployed as beta. Take a look around on the site and find some great restaurants that are far away from bike racks.
CONCLUSIONS
• I had to make immediate iterations based on constraints.
• Cross-functional collaboration was key.
• Available data had to be scoped down to the top 500 locations to maintain quick processing time. I designated 6 priority groups for the restaurant locations, but these color coded/numbered callouts were not able to be implemented within the development time.
• I had to remove a full screen map view since that could not be developed within the time frame.
• Most importantly, moving forward, I would conduct much more specific research around the process of requesting bike racks for the Spot Improvement Program. I was not able to reach staff during the hackathon, and I want to learn more about their process and what type of information they would need in order to decide which requested locations receive new bike racks.