Bcycle App - Usability Evaluation
Urban Mobility
Research
Usability Test
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My role
UX Research, Heuristic Analysis
Type
Group — Evaluative Research
Background
My team and I were regular users of Pacers Bikeshare — the free bike-share program that launched in Indianapolis in 2024. Most of us on the team were international students navigating the city on a budget, and the BCycle app was a daily tool. We knew it well enough to feel where it failed us.
For our Interaction Design Methods course, we decided to study what we were already living: a mobility app that people need to trust quickly, outdoors, often under time pressure. Bike-share interactions are uniquely high-stakes for usability, there's no second chance when you're locked out or the bike isn't actually there.
Goal
Our goal wasn't to critique the app for critique's sake. We wanted to uncover why it eroded trust, and what specific interface decisions were responsible, so they could be fixed.
The pain-point
"Designing for shared mobility means designing for confidence in motion. When the app shows you a bike that isn't there, it doesn't just waste your time, it makes you stop trusting the whole system."
~A regular user
Research plan
Mixed methods
We layered four research methods to triangulate findings — each one revealing a different dimension of the same core problem. Qualitative sessions gave us the texture, quantitative surveys gave us the scale.
Semi-Structured Interviews
Think-Aloud Usability Sessions
System Usability Scale (SUS)
Heuristic Analysis
Key Findings
What users were actually experiencing
Across interviews and think-aloud sessions, five patterns surfaced consistently. These weren't edge cases, they were structural, recurring failures that shaped how people felt about using the system.
Critical
Availability Data You Can't Trust
Critical
No E-Bike Battery Visibility
High
Ambiguous Unlock Confirmation
High
No In-Ride Timer or Status
Medium
Return Station Uncertainty
Quantitative Results
The SUS score confirmed what we heard
The System Usability Scale produces a score from 0–100. Scores above 80 are considered "good," scores in the 60s are "okay," and anything below 50 signals serious usability problems. BCycle scored in the marginal range.
This places BCycle in the marginal-to-okay range; technically above failing, but well below the threshold most product teams would accept for a daily-use mobility app. The score aligns tightly with what qualitative sessions surfaced.
0 — Awful
Not excellent
50 — Poor
Marginal usability
80 — Good
Inconsistent feedback
100 — Excellent
Clear improvement paths
Heuristic Analysis
Where the interface breaks the rules
We mapped what we observed against Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics, annotating the exact screens where each violation lives. The issues cluster around visibility of system status and user control, the heuristics that matter most in a real-time, on-street app.
01 · Map & Information Architecture
The current-location control sits out of thumb’s reach at the top of the map, and the only usage guide hides inside the About page. Violated: Flexibility & efficiency of use · Recognition rather than recall
The current-location button sits in the top-right corner, out of easy thumb reach when the phone is held one-handed. Moving it to the lower half of the map would make re-centering quick and comfortable mid-ride.
The 'How BCycle Works' guide is buried inside the About page, so first-time riders have to remember where it lives instead of finding it where they'd expect. Surfacing it in the Info tab would put help within reach at the moment people need it.
02 · Control During Bike Selection
Back and refresh controls on the bike-selection sheet are easy to miss, and availability pins don’t make empty stations obvious at a glance. Violated: User control & freedom · Visibility of system status
The back and refresh controls on the bike-selection sheet are small and low-contrast, so riders struggle to exit or reload the screen. Giving these controls more visual weight would let users move in and out of the flow with confidence.
Station pins look similar whether a station is full or empty, so riders can't judge availability at a glance. Clearer color coding, with a distinct state for empty stations, would let people read the map in a second."
03 · Consistency Across Core Flows
Button styles shift between the map, unlock and info flows, so every screen asks riders to re-learn the interface. Violated: Consistency & standards
Button styles shift between the map, unlock, and info screens, so the same action looks different depending on where you are. Standardizing the components would cut the mental effort of re-learning the interface on every screen.
04 · Sign-In & Unlock Feedback
The sign-in screen offers no path to create an account, and the unlock confirmation adds separators and noise exactly where clarity matters most. Violated: User control & freedom · Aesthetic & minimalist design
The sign-in screen offers no path to create an account, leaving first-time users at a dead end. Adding a clear sign-up link would give new riders an obvious way forward.
The unlock confirmation crowds the title and message with separators and extra lines, right when riders want a quick, clear read. Paring it back to the essential confirmation would make the moment feel cleaner and faster to parse.
Design Recommendations
Six changes with the most leverage
We prioritized by the overlap of severity and feasibility, the fixes that would most immediately restore rider trust without demanding a back-end overhaul. Each one traces straight back to a finding above.
01
Live Availability With a Timestamp
02
03
04
05
06
The Outcome
The findings reached the team building the product
After wrapping the study, we presented our findings directly to the Pacers Bikeshare team, who passed the feedback on to BCycle. That was the grounding moment, the point where the research stopped being an assignment and became input to a real product.
Key takeaways:
Mixed methods earn their keep. The SUS score alone couldn’t tell us why riders felt anxious, and interviews alone couldn’t show how widespread the issues were. Together they built a case we could act on.
Trust is the real metric. Shared mobility doesn’t forgive ambiguity; every stale count and unclear confirmation chips away at a rider’s willingness to trust the system next time.
Severity ratings force honest prioritization. Rating each heuristic violation separated annoying from trust-breaking, and kept our recommendations focused on the fixes with genuine leverage.
Being the user is an edge. We studied an app we rode with every week, so we knew exactly where to look because we had already felt the friction ourselves.