How might we make the Divvy bike sharing system more inclusive to the 1%?
Have you ever thought of whom comes up the whole Divvy ridership population? Have you ever wondering how people are using the service?
Form a bike design perspective, Divvy is using step-through design, which is traditionally associated with women’s bike. Normally, the feminine design is not appealing to the majority male, however, from the statics, we know that men do ride heavily, which indicates divvy bike is kind of successful universal design already. So why don’t more women ride? Divvy bike sharing system seems to function well for the majority users (the 90%) currently, so who’s representing minority? And how to make this system more inclusive to those people?
PHASE 1: PROJECT TIMELINE
"Invisible Woman" was a solo project (class required) done by 6 weeks as a reflection of the course "Designing Futures". The individual project aimed to identify types of "ethical" problem, diagnose the underlying causes, make an argument and re-innovate.
Due to the short period of time, as soon as I decided to use "Divvy" as my design subject, I came up with my project plan, and research part mainly relied on secondary research.
PHASE 2: RESEARCH & LEARNING
My research began with a thorough literature review which includes published reports, case studies, academic papers, relevant blogs, and news. It helped me to gain a broader understanding of the subject matter in a short period of time, and from there, I'm able to combine and compare all the data I collected to analyze and see if there would have some interesting findings.
LEARNING PROCESS
KEY LEARNINGS
Divvy is Chicagoland’s main bike share system owned by the city, with a network of bikes and dock stations across Chicago and Evanston, and the amount of ridership keeps growing every year.
Cycling is still a male-dominated activity, and bike share isn’t much different so far. Multiple reports and news found that an extensive gender gap exists among DIvvy riders, with males logging over three times the number of trips as females.
Residents and visitors are the main users. With different usage purposes, Divvy is one of the most essential parts of Chicago’s public transportation and mobility.
The pattern in usage reflects a worldwide phenomenon both in bike-sharing schemes and private cycling.
Equity in access is a growing concern and the city offers a discount on annual memberships for low-income riders with eligibility determined by income level.
Cycling can provide a sense of independence and control, but compared to other transportation methods, it is a vulnerable act.
QUESTIONS
1. How serious is this existing gender gap among divvy's ridership?
2. What keeps women away from cycling?
3. Is this universal designed bike a gendered object?
picture for inspiration
SECOND ROUND RESEARCH
How People Are Using Divvy Service?
In order to get a real sense of the gender gap in Divvy, I used Divvy trip data which was available on its website to make a 2D and 3D visualizations that explored patterns in Divvy usage.
MAKING "INVISIBLE" VISIBLE
What Can Data Inform Us?
1. Male ridership is approximately 3 times over than female ridership.
2. A more consistent number of bike commuters over recreational users throughout the year.
1. A different trend between weekdays and weekends. In the weekday, one can easily see two traffic peaks, however, during the weekends, the curve is more gentle.
2. Obvious traffic change during major events, holidays and tough weather considerations. (ex: heavy traffic before and after the 4th of July fireworks)
1. Seasons have a huge influence on visibility, which directly affects the overall ridership.
2. More traffic in the evening than in the morning.
3. Considered the traffic flow in weekdays when the visibility is poor, amounts of users still use the service.
It’s no secret that bike-share systems across the country have an equity problem.
As data shown that women, on average, ride less than men. The fact that women don’t ride bikes much is a reflection of how dangerous cycling is perceived, and where cycling is safe, more women cycle, so the proportion of women cycling is an indication of its safety.
So what are the THINGS/REASONS that keep women from cycling?
PHASE 2: DIAGNOSIS
ANALYSIS & SYNTHESIS
After defining the design challenge, I did another round of analysis and synthesis in order to find out the reasons that keep women from cycling. To do so, I categorized information by focusing on the cycling experience from micro to meso level. In other word, I deconstructed the cycling experience to “Bike”-the thing, “Biker”-the people, and “Biking”-the action, and put them into two different settings, the micro level focused on “product and service” level and the meso level was “social + economic context”.
OUTCOMES
PHRASE 3: DEVELOP THE PRODUCT DESIGN FOR DIVVY
REFRAME DESIGN CHALLENGE
What if Divvy can help women "be seen" at the street?
KEY FEATURES
Meet Divvy Bulb, a light projector that enables you to draw your own bike lanes.
HOW IT WORKS
Meet Lisa!
Lisa is a working mom with two kids, she works in downtown Chicago while living in Oak Park. She uses combined transportation, and Divvy helps her with the last mile.
PHRASE 4: DEVELOP MEASUREMENTS FOR SUCCESS
By using "Adapting Cycle", I try to build the road map to measure the impacts of Divvy Bulb. As one can see, at the "Prototyping" and "Micro-Piloting" stages, small changed can be made with products itself. However, moving on to the "Scaling-up" stage, more changes may relate to the local traffic regulation, which implies the involvement of government might be needed.
.
Moreover, as the product becomes more mature, the team should also put efforts in marketing, especially in customer education. As I pointed out in the value web diagram, the female's identity relates to social stigma also influence their decision making and behavior, which can be viewed as the convention that embedded in our society for a long time. As we hope that more women will be riding on the road in the future, we should focus on not only the product but also the societal values and attitudes that come afterward.
