Samsung J Series phone’s native app (S Bike) launched in 2016 addresses road safety concerns for two wheeler motorists in South Asia
How might we make riding safer for two wheeler motorists?
Problem
Nearly 20% of the annual on-road casualties in India happen on two wheelers. A two wheeler is unsafe vehicle by its design yet its a massively adopted mode of commute in Indian subcontinent. Majority of two wheeler motorists in India keep their mobile phones in the front pocket to easily attend the phone calls while riding. However, Samsung wanted to radically transform this behaviour so that the riders could focus on the road - yet never miss an urgent/important phone call. In 2015, there was no application available that addressed the safety needs of a two wheeler motorist and hence, a great opportunity for Samsung.
Solution
Samsung's Product Innovation Team (PIT) believed that an Indian consumer demanded more meaningful innovations instead of mere high resolution cameras, higher storage capacity, lower price etc. in a smartphone.
S Bike is based around the core idea that two-wheeler riders should not be distracted by incoming calls while on the road. Once activated, S bike mode will inform callers through an automated answering machine that the user is riding and cannot take calls. In case of an emergency, callers can press 1, which allows the call to go through. Motion Lock feature prevents bikers to attend call while riding. Bikers have to come to a halt to take those emergency calls.
ROLE
Research, Insights, ideation, Wire Framing, User Journey, Storyboarding, Interaction Design, prototyping
Organization & TEAMS
Samsung Electronics India | Product Innovation, Corporate Marketing, R&D, Design
DURATION
4 Months
PRODUCT
Samsung J3 (entry level smartphones) | 2016
PROCESS
DEsk Research
Primary Research
Conducted 3 workshops with about 30 motorists to explore the nuances associated with the use of mobile phones during daily commute on their two wheelers. The objective was to understand and capture the user journey, behaviours, pain points and aspirations of the riders.
Persona
The riders were identified into 2 broad personas based on the research. Regardless of the different personas, it was evident from the three workshops that both how mobile was a cause of concern while riding and how easily can a careless act turn into a fatal consequence.
Synthesis & Insights
Participants’ overall pain points (around mobile phones while riding) were bucketed into 6 main clusters -
Attending phone calls while riding
Not being able to differentiate between which calls to take and which to ignore
Tempted to use phone while riding
Family members get anxious & request whereabouts
Finding directions
Tempted to speed up (non-mobile related)
Out of the above mentioned 6 clusters, only the top 3 problem areas were considered for further development.
Design Principles
Samsung’s can address the two wheeler motorist’s concern if it’s mobile phones have the following capabilities:
Ability to filter out the unwanted calls (while riding) and let only the urgent/important ones to go through
Ability to revert the caller without delay and without compromising safety
Ability to prevent rider from using the phone while riding
Ideation Workshop
Conducted the ideation workshops with a mix of participants that included designers, engineers and innovators who themselves were motorists and non-motorists. During the sessions, a number of possible solutions were captured that addressed the top 6 shortlisted pain points as well as the top 3 goals (mentioned above). By the end of the exercise, the following 6 features emerged by the collective brainstorming:
Key Feature #1: Urgent Call Filteration & Answering Machine
Infographic above shows two use case scenarios where Urgent Call filtration works. In case 1, when a normal call is made - the caller gets notified through a standard pre-recorded S Bike Mode message that receiver is currently riding and cannot pick the call. In case 2, the caller can press ‘1’ and make the call urgent. In that case, the rider gets notified of the call and can choose to accept the call or not.
Key Feature #2: Motion Lock
Above infographic shows the Motion Lock Feature in action under two use cases. In case 1, the rider receives notification of an urgent call and tries to pick the call while in motion. However, in that case the rider can not pass through the locked screen and hence, is unable to pick the call. Its only in case 2, when rider can pick the call only after the vehicle has come to a complete stop.
Additional Feature #1: Notification
Post ride, the rider will have an access to the past calls received during the rides. The app would display the complete list of urgent as well as non urgent calls received and would further offer the options to revert to the caller through text or voice.
Additional Feature #2: Smart Reply
While off road, the rider can set up the Smart Reply feature by adding the frequently commuted path and share that with individuals that are selected from the contact list. Rider can even choose to share the path or a recorded message with those who call during the ride.
Additional Feature #3: My Rides
Post ride, the rider can access all the past rides made using S Bike Mode on. With this, the rider can unlock the promotional features/rewards offered by Samsung based on the acceptable riding norms (eg. speed, app usage, attempts to use phone while driving etc.)
User Flow
All the key as well as the additional features can be summarised in the following user flow. The happy path is when the rider (while riding) is notified of an urgent/important, but cannot pick the call while in motion. Rider is allowed to answer the call only when he/she has come to a complete stop (parked on the side of the road), thereby ensuring the safety of the rider.
WIRE FRames
The rough structure of the app was drawn into wireframes to evaluate the flow and identify missing links. This proved extremely helpful step before jumping into finalising the content and refining the screen into high fidelity versions.
Wireframes for ‘Notification’ feature & setting up the Language Preferences :
Wireframes for ‘Smart Reply’ feature:
Wireframes for ‘My Rides’ feature:
Mid Fidelity (Digital) Wireframes
The hand drawn wireframes were later converted into digital wireframes (in Sketch) that could be taken to prototyping platforms (like Marvel/invision) for a rough prototype creation.
Prototyping
Rough prototype in Invision was extremely helpful to not just find the missing experiences but also a great communication tool to be shared with the project key stakeholders. It gave a glimpse of what the final version of the app would look like.
High Fidelty Screens (On-Boarding)
Bonus Feature: Unique Interaction Design (A New Way for App Activation)
How can we make the app activation easier (& stickier) for each ride of the motorist?
The ideal use case was to have the S Bike Mode app get switched on and off automatically as the rider (with J series phone) embarks and disembarks the vehicle. However, Near Field Communication technology (NFC tag) was adopted to provide a cost effective and simple solution. As an alternative to the original idea, the motorist is required to simply tap the Samsung J series mobile phone on an S Bike mode NFC sticker (that comes free with the phone) for the app activation. This NFC sticker can be placed at any convenient location on the vehicle (as shown on the tank in the image below).
One of the key reason for S Bike Mode’s mass adoption was the stickiness to a simple yet stylish ‘tapping ritual’ for the app activation.
TV/Web Commercials
Impact On The Business
S Bike Mode was projected as the key highlight of the Samsung’s J3 smart phones launched in 2016. Such meaningful and impactful innovation feature contributed in boosting Samsung’s presence in India and helped the company capture 30% market share of the entry segment smartphones.
By 2017, more than 50 Million two wheeler motorists downloaded the app and had having safer riding experience than before.
After the successful initial launch on the entry segment smart phones J series (J3, J5 and J7) in 2016 - the leadership decided to make it a native app for Samsung’s mid segment smart phone A Series (A5 & A7) in 2017.
By 2017, Galaxy J series became India’s most popular phone model, with a 30% share of the total smartphone sales in the country, according to syndicated data.
The success of the app was so tremendous that it crossed the boundaries and be later introduced not just to the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) but also to the South East Asian countries to address the unmet need of a huge two wheeler market and contribute to Samsung’s business.
Learnings From the Project
S Bike mode gave me the opportunity to participate and handle my first UX design project. Developed core skills of UX Designer ( wire frame, storyboard, user flow, interaction design, low fidelity prototype)
I got the chance to work on Samsung’s fast moving vertical (mobile) that had a shortest turnaround time (compared to other verticals in Samsung's portfolio) and fastest gratification (feature launched within 6 months from the start of the project).
Co-owner of Design Patent for the Motion Lock feature of the S Bike mode.