Clarification :

The bike rental app is for renting through docks or through bike rental shops (Assuming it is bike rental shops)

Global or US (Global given US public transport is well developed and in many developing countries bicycles/bikes/car rentals are the only way to get around)

Goal :

User adoption (Get people to use the app to rent bikes)

User Groups:

Short-term renters: For a day

Long-term renters: For duration of travel (1 week – 1 month)

Family/Groups : Need multiple bicycles for a short duration

We will pick the long-term renters as they have more invested in finding the right bike and the revenue will be higher.

User Needs:

1. Discovery:  Finding a bike close by, FInding the right kind of bike/renter

2. Making sure they are not overpaying

3. Effortless booking and payment (Includes situations where someone might want to extend rental)

4. What to do in emergencies (Accident, damage, loss, stolen)

5. Delivery/Pick-up of bike is a hassle

6. Loss of key

Solutions:

Based on th above, the solutions to prioritise:

1. Discovery: Map based listing, repoutation and review of bike shops

2. Calendar booking, online payment

3. Emergency: Insurance, Find my bike, report theft

Metrics :

1. CTR (Click through rate) on bike shops

2. Average #Reviews and Ratings

3. Bounce rate (Leave without booking) vs Conversion rate (Booking made)

4. #insurances bought/#total rentals (%)

5. Revenue through insurance (Commission)

6. CTR : find my bike

7. #thefts reported /# on total rentals (%)

Comprehend the situation

To make sure I understand the case, we are building a mobile app that enables tourists to find bike renting shops and rent a bike through the app? Also, we are focussing on revenue generation, which means more bookings and monetization opportunities through the app.

Identify user personas

Budget traveler: A college-going early 20’s Rob taking a semester break to travel in South America with his savings from the multiple part-time jobs he juggled in the past semesters.

Family vacation traveler: A high earning middle-aged adult John who has a habit of taking seasonal vacations in summer and winter along with his family.

Business traveler: Jeff, a management consultant, who visits multiple clients in various countries on short-term assignments and looks to explore the place whenever he gets time between his busy schedule.

I want to analyze the customer segments based on three factors – Interest, Available Time, Willingness to spend. Below table summarizes my analysis.

InterestTimeSpending powerBudget travelerFamily vacation travelerBusiness traveler

Since we are focussing on revenue, we need customers who have high willingness to spend. We also need someone with interest and time to engage in the activity of bike riding. Hence, I would like to focus on Family vacation traveler users.
List down the needs 

1. Wants to have a majority of his time spent leisurely with family rather than worrying about logistics and planning a day
2. Safety and security are the highest priorities. Concerned about helmets, speed limits, crossings, etc
3. Looks for other information such as rest areas, restaurants, places of interest
4. Wants to park the bike and quickly hop on and hop off at locations as per day plan
5. Likes to stop frequently and take family pictures

Cut through prioritization

I will focus on points 1, 2, and 4 because of 2 reasons. First, our chosen customer is ready to spend only when his must-haves are met. In this case, his must-haves are safety and taking time out of planning so that he can have more family time. Second, closely integrated with planning a travel day is taking the hassle out of thinking about bike parking. Our target is to provide seamless renting and riding bike experience without adding any additional friction. Also, the technologies required to facilitate this experience, which I will be discussing in the solution part, are readily available at low cost or even for free.

List the solutions

I want to clarify that it is ok to use any latest technology that is available today?

Integrate with google maps/trips public API: The idea here is to keep the user engaged with the app all the way from check-in to return while identifying opportunities to monetize along the way.

Sensor-enabled: This IoT device mounted on a bike is similar to locking and unlocking the front door of your house through mobile apps. This provides flexibility to leave the bike at many places and have it securely locked. It can also be used to analyze data from other bikes and provide timely notifications to the user about the weather, traffic, etc

Evaluate the solutions 

With our business goal of revenue generation in mind, implementation costs become a deciding factor. We want to build a solution that does not add any ongoing costs per usage. The sensor-enabled solution requires constant monitoring and analysis of data as well as incurs a substantial fixed cost in the form of building the IoT device. Although we can try with a limited number of bikes focussing on one area, the development costs involved won’t reduce significantly. I believe that puts us at huge risk as we are losing strategic flexibility by investing a lot upfront.

On the other hand, a mobile app integrated with Google maps API is “build once and operate forever” mechanism. We can have the user hold on to the app through the entire journey. Monetizing opportunities include commissions from bike shops that list on our app and serving location-based advertisements such as restaurants. Costs include google maps usage fee, which can be packed in the booking fee. We are essentially bringing in all bike rental shops under one umbrella while at the same time forcing them to be competitive by providing safe, secure, and convenient experience for the user as monitored by customer ratings. We also take the pain of trip planning by leveraging Google trips that suggest day plans based on user’s preferences.

Summary

To put it all together, we build a mobile app leveraging Google maps API that shows nearby bike rentals, provides online check-in, and acts as a guide suggesting places to visit while serving location-based advertisements.

How would you design a bicycle renting app for tourists?

Clarity

When you say tourists do you mean international or national – could be both

is it only for tourists or anyone can rent it? – could be either, assuming you want to optimise for tourists here

Is the physical design/logistic of the bike renting app part of the scope – no, just design the app, assume physical condition as deem apt

Any specific country in mind – lets assume london for starters

Is this a native app or web app – as you feel apt

who are the customers?

The renters of the bike can be broken down into following cohorts:

Locals

Tourists , as mentioned in the problem we want to focus on this cohort

Single individuals – I would focus on single individuals since anecdotally speaking this cohort is the one I’ve seen renting bikes most often

Families

Large groups

Personsas are as follow:

Single male tourist

Mark, a 33 year old French native is visiting london and wants to see all the sights around london

He speaks fluent french, is uncomfortable with English , likes exercising and being out in the son, is conscious about his carbon foot print has plenty of disposal income

He is an expert rider, likes to have a rugged bike to go around town that he doesnt need to worry about

Uses iphone X

Single female tourist

Sukhmani is a 26 year old Indian female visiting london for the first time, she is a on a budget hence doesn’t want to spend a lot of money

She is an amateur rider and want a bike that isn’t too heavy and has storage space.

She is worried for her safety and uses whatsapp to share live location with her friends.

User journey

Need trigger: tourists may realise that they need a bike much before they travel or after they land, they will be using this bike usually for travelling around town locally

User action: Such users may search for bike rental on search engines first before they go looking for an app, a minority may search on play store.

Users may want to search by bike preference and then figure out pick up location or they may want to search by location and pick the bike available.

purchase: Once the user has figured out the bike he/she wants, they may be hesistant to pay the full amount upfront since they may not be sure of their logistics

post purchase:  I would want to know the different places I can drop off the bike at/it may be far for me so I may consider pick up

Needs/gaps

What are the primary metric/secondary metrics for this

Since this app is new we need to validate if it’s solving the problem for the users so we may want to track % of users installing the app who try to book a bike (not necessarily successfully) this will give us a sense of usability/utility of the app.

This tells me 1) if users find the UX intuitive 2) is the value prop clear to the user ie is he/she able to identify which bike they want

risk here is that this ignores the actual booking funnel, so as a defensive metric i’d want to look at % transaction rate as well

health metrics

ARPU – P0

Average days booked  – P0

% of bikes succesfully returned within time- P0

% of each feature used ( this will tell us if we’ve over built the MVP) – P1

Time spent in the app – here we dont want this numnber to be high since it means users are strugglign with understanding the steps – P0

Sessions to transaction ratio – P0

Aha moments – P0

Here’s my take on how to answer this Google product design interview question –

Assumptions & Questions

To clarify, we want to design a:

• Mobile app for best tourist places in a specific country (say Spain).
• By bicycle we mean normal bicycle & e-bikes with less than 500 watt power which do not require DRIVING LICENSES.

• Tourists (Solo traveller/group of friends/family) – This is the main user group and their objectives are to explore the popular places in the city (museums, zoo, monuments, sightseeing) and
• Guides/Travel Agency – They may want to include rented bikes to their customers and offer them this optional service.

3) Cost – User can select bike types and it will display the cost (per hour, per day basis).

• When a se

• Setup payment – Setup a payment wallet (Paypal etc.), Credit card, Debit Card
• Unlock the bicycle – Scan QR code to unlock the bike which will start the trip automatically and time will recorded and displayed to the rider
• Safety – Each bike will have a attached helmet to it