The first challenge was to figure out where to start the user journey. We looked at several different potential points of entry for renting a bike.

In the end, we decided on a simple card at the bottom of the map that would persist for roughly a month. It would offer riders a brief overview of this new red electric bike designed by our partners at Jump.

I designed this card to look distinct from other Uber products in terms of color and style, based on feedback from our product team. I focused the content on the fact that these bikes, unlike many of our competitors, had an electric motor instead of traditional 100% pedal-biking. I decided after some initial research conversations with users that this was a key selling point.

The button linked out to a few overview screens (see the top of this page). I wrote copy that spoke to how easy it is to find and ride a Jump bike. I also spoke to their ideal use as a new way to get to work (our marketing manager had decided to target commuters first), and the simplicity of locking and leaving the bike anytime you liked, for as many different destinations as you wanted.

The main card on the map, combined with the email our customer relationship management team sent, solved for most of the awareness building.

But I still advocated for hints of the new bike here and there in other areas of our app experience. I felt this was a cool product that people wouldn’t get sick of hearing about and seeing.

Initial research backed that up - riders wanted more bike options besides the city bikes that had already begun cropping up in urban areas.

I convinced our product leaders that the new bike program was worthy of an entry in the main hamburger menu of the rider app.

We moved the link around after the initial launch. Eventually it bumped up from the bottom, below Free Rides, to just below the car rental link. The reason was simple - our bike product was a big hit in its first couple months, in the first 5 cities where we launched (including San Francisco).

The second thing to design was supporting copy explaining how the bike itself works. The Jump team themselves wanted the bike to speak for itself. But after some initial user testing, including with in-house Uber employees, I felt the bikes needed a bit more explanation.

The main message to convey was that the e-assist electric motor kicked in harder as you worked harder. For example, you’d feel it help more when you went up an incline. This seemed to surprise initial users - they weren’t expecting to feel the boost when they started climbing. I tried to design the copy to give them advance warning of how it would work when they started pedaling extra hard up those legendary San Francisco hills.

Our legal team was very keen on safety content, and plenty of it. So we built in some cards that the user is required to flip through the first time they sign up to ride. I’m not a savvy visual designer, so my design partner at Uber put together the icons for these cards.

In coordination with our in-house lawyers, I suggested the most important points to cover. We also looked at some of our initial user research and the experiences our employees and other users were having during trial rides.

I can remember myself that the brakes were very aggressive, and that if you squeezed them too hard, it could feel like the bike was jolting to a stop.

After the initial required read-through of the bike safety tips, we left bread crumbs in the experience to get back to them, in case you needed to re-read at any point. This was also a legal requirement.

Another key piece of the experience involved gradually conveying the relationship between Jump and Uber. Basically, the bikes were Jump’s. The app experience was provided by Uber.

Our product and legal teams emphasized the importance of reinforcing this, so that if there was a problem with either the bike or the app, the user knew which company they should turn to for help. Our marketing team, however, had chosen to call them Uber Bikes. So, a compromise position was to call it, Uber Bike, “powered” by Jump.

Data sharing was a big component of the Jump/Uber relationship. We needed users to understand that we’d be sharing details of their Uber account with Jump, including personal details such as your full name and address.

I wrote the first drafts of these legal pages, and ran them through extensive reviews with lawyers working for both Uber and Jump. I wasn’t a big fan of the all-caps text and other arbitrary capitalization. But, sometimes copy is about compromise!

The fun, design-intensive portion of this product’s development was finding and reserving a bike. We wanted the look and feel to be familiar to riders who had used Uber to get car rides. But we also wanted it to be distinctly Uber Bike - so, for example, using bike icons in place of dots or cars.

I can’t take responsibility for designing the icons. But it was my idea to include the remaining battery life of a bike once you tap on one.

Once you pick a bike, we shoot you a note about the cost. It was a huge advantage that there weren’t many hidden fees or other secret charges, and the pricing model was very flat and simple.

This screen shows version 1. Eventually, the product team changed it to an hourly fee, to further simplify the experience.

We showed you as simply as possible how to get to the bike. Then we took you to instructions on how to unlock and begin riding. If for some reason you reserved a bike by accident, or it was further away than you thought, you could end your reservation right away and get a refund.

Once you were at the bike and ready to pick it up, we took the user to a few instructional screens. We asked them to check out the bike and make sure it was in working order before they started riding.

This was a fun project to write and design for, because I could get a bit more cheeky than usual with the voice and tone. The bike itself was a less formal product than riding with a driver, with fewer legal concerns. Also, Jump was already using a very conversational, even humorous style with the help copy and emails they were serving up to users.

Each of the steps in this mini-flow directly corresponded to the initial research we’d done. We had asked riders where the confusion points were and what they didn’t understand about the physical bike. We had a combination of historical research from Jump’s initial rollout, along with new research we conducted out on the streets with the Uber team.

Unlocking the bike could be tricky. Jump had designed in a numerical keypad on the back that some users had difficulty finding and using. These screens went through several iterations, including making the PIN much larger and more visible. I also reinforced the need to check the bike number, since sometimes several bikes were on the same city block.

Budget limitations from our engineering team forced us to make the on-ride experience very similar to what riders saw when they were in a car with a driver. I tried to color this map with more bike branding. But ultimately it ended up looking almost identical to the other ride experiences, except for the timer and total cost.

One tricky aspect of the experience was what the product team called the “bike zone.” This was an area defined by our contract with the city. Inside the zone, we were allowed to populate city sidewalks with bikes and leave them locked there. Outside the zone, it was illegal to have the bikes locked up on sidewalks, per city ordinance.

Our product team chose to communicate the bike zone concept only if the user started to ride outside of the zone. We’d then introduce a message saying that if you lock up there, we fine you the same amount that the city fines us.

I felt this should have been communicated more upfront. But this was another compromise between product and design. I understood their reasoning - why talk about fees of up to $50 to users, when most of them won’t even travel to these outer areas of the city? However, I also always advocate for full transparency around pricing and fees. Don’t surprise users with hidden charges!

This remains one of my favorite screens, because it conveys all the right messages about locking.

From research, and reinforced by our marketing team, we knew that a major selling point was the ‘stationless’ concept of Jump bikes. Unlike other city bike services, you didn’t have to find a special station to lock the bike or finish a ride. You could literally lock it anywhere, as long as it was in that bike zone.

Our legal team asked me to write the parallel positioning message. They knew it would help keep our relationship with cities positive.

Then, I'd found in testing the bikes myself that you could easily leave the bike thinking the lock was locked, even though it was still open. Since it wasn’t in Jump’s budget to improve the locking mechanism, I added a note to be sure you extra-secure that lock.

This messaging represents the ultimate coming together of our Jump partners, our legal and marketing and product teams, and our design and content team.

The final component of the in-app experience was the post-trip design and messaging. This ended up being the part that caused the most confusion after our initial rollout. So we iterated a lot in that first six months of releasing the product.

The bike zone was an especially tricky thing. Despite the earlier messaging I had put together, and the reinforcement of the zone using border lines on the map, many users still locked the bike outside the zone. Then they were upset when they were charged a hefty fine.

It was my suggestion to add a grace period in future iterations. That way, if they tried to leave the bike outside the zone, they’d get plenty of warning before being charged.

We developed the receipt screen several different times, and went back and forth on what details to supply. Later iterations added the route taken (including first and last address/location), as well as the total time on-trip. It took awhile to suss out the details that were most relevant and important to users.

Adding the Bike PIN was essential if they needed to contact Jump for any reason - for example, if the physical bike didn’t work as it was supposed to.

I’m a wrestling fan, hence the cameo from The Rock in the initial Figma designs.