Expert Answer
Anonymous
To clarify, we are planning to introduce a bike fleet to facilitate in campus transportation? So the target audience is college students mainly, secondly faculty and staff, and third maybe visitors. Are we going to allow taking bikes out of campus? I am assuming the latter is not allowed so we are mainly targeting students who don't come to campus with their bikes. the pain points we are trying to address is transportation within a campus, which can become challenging especially if you have time constraints like having consecutive classes on two opposite ends of a big campus. even if you have a bike, parking your bike and storing it safely can be a concern. are we going to charge for this service or will this be a free service? if I am allowed to choose, I will propose that it is a free service for short durations but a paid service for long durations (if you check out a bike longer than an hour let's say). i would like to focus on the use case of making it to my next class which is at the other end of the campus within 10 minutes. if I think about the user journey, after I get out of my class I have to locate a free bike, go to the bike, check it out, bike to a drop off location close to my next class and drop the bike. I think this experience can be facilitated to a great extent with a digital, mobile app that keeps track of the bike fleet. first off I want to be able to locate a free bike near me, I can do that from my phone app and when I see one available maybe I can claim / or reserve it. then I can get the fastest walking path on my phone. once I get to it, i can unlock the bike using my app. then I can locate the drop of location using the map. after drop off, I can release the bike and leave it locked. the app can track of duration, warn me when i will be charged. maybe there are price options for longer term rentals for when I want to take the bike home for that day. i thought of facial recognition option for the bike unlock and lock steps but i abandoned that idea for privacy and practicality reasons.
