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Citi Bike Information Design
Role
Product Designer for Motivate (operators of Citi Bike)
Citi Bike is a public bicycle sharing system in New York City. As a central source of information about the system, the physical kiosk located at each bike station explains how it works. Amy Wu and I redesigned the informational panel located on the kiosk to be a universal how-to guide for the Citi Bike.
The final design was installed on 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.
Old and wordy
New and illustritive
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. The original design required reading directions in English. We therefore identified the informational panel as a high impact and low effort intervention to improve Citi Bike's user experience.
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.
We performed primary research, observing and interviewing customers while they took out a bike for the first time and found that they had difficulty at every stage of taking out a bike. It was clear that the panel needed to be completely redesigned.
We identified how to build a better information architecture through clearly delineating steps and improved legibility with a illustrated visual design language.
The final design focuses on illustrations that walk users through the bike rental process, condensing and translating what had been large blocks of text into universal directions and pricing table.
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