ZBoard- Mobile App Design
The ZBoard is a fast, fun and easy way to get around, and one of the only electric skateboards in the market that doesn’t require a remote.
In this project we designed an app for the company's upcoming new board model that has the ability to communicate with a smartphone via bluetooth.
My Role: UX Designer, Lead Researcher
Team Collaborators:
Alan Zhu- Lead UI Designer
Freddy Castillo- Project Manager
Project Challenge
The business goals were to have an app that will allow users to see and track information and help increase user engagement.
Therefore, our design challenge was to design a fun and easy to use app with features that enhance the riding experience and allow users to view data, control features of the board from the app and connect with other users.
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Research
Methods & Findings
We synthesized information from the a survey of over 120 ZBoard owners to understand their wants, needs, and frustrations, as well as a survey with over 150 owners of various electric boards.
We analyzed three of the major competitors within the market including those who already have a companion app to go along with their board and found the following:
Survey
Reliability
At times, the board stops working and users don't know what’s wrong with it.​
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Board Maintenance
if any part on his board suddenly breaks or just needs to be replaced due to wear and tear, He has to either wait until receiving the replacement part or send his board to the ZBoard HQ and wait to get it back.
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Weather
If it is raining or it has recently rained and there are puddles outside he doesn’t want to risk ruining his board by getting water damage.
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Trip Miles
Users can't track mileage and so they're currently using another app to track their trip miles.​
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Achievements
Users want to share their milestones and excitement, and see how they rank compared to user board owners.
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Lifetime Miles
is more important to them because they like the competition aspect and want to share their excitement and compare milestone with other users.
Comparative & Competitive Analysis
ZBoard has the highest range in the market: 16-24 miles per single battery charge compared to 6-7 for the competitors.
The two direct competitors, both require a remote to control their boards, therefor forces the users to engage with a device while riding, which compromises safety.
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Competitor board owners mostly use the battery life, odometer, and trip meter features
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The price point of an electric board is $1299- $1499, setting user expectations for a high quality product and attentive customer service.
User Engagement: all three competitors have more than 10 times likes and shares on social media with a large community across different platforms.
Personas
Wireframes
After finalizing the information architecture, it was now time to sketch out some wireframe ideas (below) for the four screens of the app: the Dashboard, Leaderboard, Gamification and Support.
The function of the dashboard was to simply view data and serve as the first screen users will see.
As Alan (lead designer) drew the below sketches of the wireframes, we debated over the range design and what would make most sense for the users, and in the end decided to go with a circular design that shows the actual range users have left, in addition to an actual battery symbol that shows the battery life percentage. It was also necessary to decide the positioning of each function as well as colors and icons to go with each speed level.
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Features
Next Steps
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Continue Prototype Testing: test other phrasing for categories within ride modes/icons. From the usability testing we conducted, we found the majority of users didn't connect the terms "Ludicrous" and "Normal" with a state of speed level and how it compares to "Beginner" and"Expert". It was also challenging to find corresponding icons for all 4 terms.​
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Continue building on gamification- additional achievements & leaderboard categories to increase user engagement.
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Develop iOS app- test the design and see how it communicates with the board.
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Consider part reordering via the app- in this version of the app the reorder part button redirects the user to the website so that they can buy the item there, but it would make the process faster to incorporate a direct shopping feature.
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Design/Develop Android app - The majority of owners are iphone users, but only by 10%. To avoid alienting android users it would be ideal to eliminate any usability problems in iOS version and then develop Android app right after, or a cross platform app.
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Explore idea of usefulness/viability of Smart Watch App- consist the hands free brand.