Forum Discussion

TJ's avatar
TJ
Resourceful Rider
4 years ago

The app design sucks

The app design has become really user unfriendly. 
It is now so hard to find your location on the map. The blue dot hides behinds the station bubbles, and when you recenter and zoom, the blue dot is not even in the center of the screen it seems 

 

plus they now make it a green circle when you are on the bike —which also hides behind station bubble—and is not intuitive. Leave it blue!

 

also let’s go back to the map design without the bike icons. They are pointless and clutter the map

 

if you need to differentiate between bikes and scooters (not an issue in NYC) then use colors and have a legend on the map

 

it’s really annoying to use 

 

also I don’t like that you don’t get a running tally of your bike angle points. I want to know how many I have for the month, not just how many points to the next reward 

  • ericisshort's avatar
    ericisshort
    Resourceful Rider

    I’m on the same page about how much this app sucks, but I want to expand on two specific problems that are driving me crazy:

     

    1. station location — why do the station icons not align to the bubble pointer (spike at the bottom). Instead they align to the center of the icon which causes the pointer to change the location that it points to as you zoom in and out. This has caused me to go to the wrong block many times because it points to the wrong spot. See this series of screenshots that show the same station icon pointing to three different locations depending on the amount of zoom. The actual station is just south of the park on the same side of the street, but it shows up across the street at medium zoom and a block south when zoomed out a bit more. Align the icon to the pointer or remove the pointer because as is, this is broken and misleading.

     

    2. Forced data entry — Why do you make us to leave a review after our last ride? It’s as if you copied Lyft’s driver review process without thinking whether it was right for citibike at all. The X button on the form minimizes the pop up but won’t allow me to see any stations or bikes until I finish the report or wait a predetermined number of minutes until the form disappears from my screen. Forcing closed the app won’t remove it, so I’m made to wait until it disappears or else fill out the form. The data would be much more useful if it were not mandatory, and to reiterate that point, I refuse to give citibike any valid data until the form is optional. All reports that I’m forced to send will be blank with zero stars. I complained about this through the support form when the app launched, but nothing has been done about it. Other bike angels, if you agree with my frustration, please do the same to protest citibike’s forced data entry. There are definitely times when the form would be useful, like when a bike is broken, but don’t  give them any good data until they fix this. 

    • MKL68's avatar
      MKL68
      Casual Commenter

      I agree with your points, and on point 2, I have left zero stars and zero comments for almost all my rides (I do comment if there's something relevant to say).  It's a stupid app that I hate now.  I can barely read it at times and try to plan rides....

    • WestEndAl's avatar
      WestEndAl
      Steady Solver

      This is part of a constellation of things that all point to the conclusion that City Bike's app/web site designers are not Citi Bike users, and/or don't bother asking users whether some proposed feature makes any sense. Getting this stuff right is not that hard if you pay attention!

       

    • JL's avatar
      JL
      Resourceful Rider

      I despise this feature. I hit submit without giving feedback to get rid of it. It's a useless step meant to suck up feedback for us. Let us decide when we want to sent it.

  • stuart's avatar
    stuart
    Resourceful Rider

    I echo the complaints of TJ and ericisshort.

     

    ericisshort, the way I deal with your problem no. 2 -- without having to wait longer than the time for a couple of screen clicks -- is to always submit an empty report. This immediately allows you to see stations and bikes on the app. (If enough of us do that regularly, maybe the IT team at Lyft will get the hint, even without our complaints here.)

     

    -- Stuart

  • bcasey11's avatar
    bcasey11
    Casual Commenter

    Forcing us to leave a review of our ride is absolutely insane. Who leaves a review of a bike for every ride? I would leave a snarky review if I thought anyone was actually reading these.

     

    Bike Angel since August 2017 - 4,456 Lifetime points

    • Sammy's avatar
      Sammy
      Casual Commenter

      It's pain in the ass when you want to get to the next pickup station and see where to drop off. I left the feedback in the beginning since chains were all rusty and ride was tough even without the incline. But they never did anything since I saw the same bike next day when I dropped off a bike.

  • vstoy's avatar
    vstoy
    Resourceful Rider

    I also have a lot of feedback on the UX/UI (Android primarily but also iOS version)

    If anyone is interested form the engineering team I am happy to share - or if there is a way to reach out directly, I am here for it

  • sypakpak's avatar
    sypakpak
    Resourceful Rider

    I think one of the important features that is now gone missing is - when I pick a Citibike station, I want to set it as my destination (it was called something like "plan your ride" in the old version). Especially with the bike angel scheme, many times I would want to go to a specific station instead of one that is recommended for my final destination. 

  • Pune's avatar
    Pune
    Resourceful Rider

    Also the "group rides" functionality which I found super useful is gone for months.  When will they bring it back (if ever)?

  • fkh's avatar
    fkh
    Casual Commenter

    Hi, Frank here from the team that works on Bike Angels and other parts of the app experience. I'm a daily user of the system. Still proudly carrying my Founding Member key, even if I mostly unlock with the app these days.

     

    Thanks for all this great feedback on the app experience.  

     

    We hear the map feedback and we have some design changes coming, you might get a sneak peek soon if you're lucky enough to be in the experimentation group. And if not vstoy (and others!) we can set something up.

     

    Thanks for the very interesting feedback on rating rides - this might be a case of power users having a different point of view, we know that giving feedback on rides is helpful for riders and gives us data to improve the system. But clearly there's a balance to be struck.

     

    Really appreciate the candid sharing of criticism, keep it coming!