The app design sucks

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!  

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

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. 

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

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

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

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.