University of Twente Student Theses
Improving cycling experiences on bicycle highways in Zeeland
Ouderkerken, R.F. (2020) Improving cycling experiences on bicycle highways in Zeeland.
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| Abstract: | Everyone in the Netherlands cycles. Still, not every bike commute in the Netherlands is engaging and enjoyable. Even with the advent of bicycle highways, which are supposed to make commuting by bike more accessible and time-saving, still too many people are commuting by car. The Dutch municipality in Zeeland wants to encourage commuting by bike instead of commuting by car as much as possible. The bicycle highway is one of its initiatives to promote and encourage cycling. However, it is still very common for people to dread the prospect of a boring, windy, rainy bicycle ride, despite the fact having access to such comfortable bicycle highways. A solution needs to be found that can improve the cycling experience and bicycle usage on the bicycle highways in Zeeland. Thus, the research question states: How can the cycling experience on bicycle highways in Zeeland be improved with the help of engaging technologies to increase bicycle usage and promotion of cycling? With the following sub-questions: • Sub 1: What types of technologies can be used persuasively and engagingly? • Sub 2: What factors influence cycling experiences and cycling frequency? • Sub 3: How can designing a technology contribute to encouraging and promoting cycling? A literature study was done to gain more insights about coming up with a possible solution for this problem. One possible solution proved to be the use of gamification, where persuasive and engaging technologies can be used to motivate the users. These techniques were further investigated to back up this thesis. To structure this research, the Creative Technology Design Process was used, where the main idea is to create a more iterative design process with steps that do not follow a specific order, consisting of ideation, specification and realization. During the ideation, two designs were made, one for an application and one for a led screen. Product requirements also have been established. Next during the specification, the product requirements were specified. Finally, a survey was conducted to see whether the two designed prototypes would contribute to the increasemnet of bicycle behavior. 42% Of respondents agreed that the proposed app would increase their bicycle behavior. As for the led screen, only 31% of respondents agreed that it would increase their bicycle behavior. The main point of critique was the concerns about privacy because LED screen projects names data publicly. Based on the results of the survey, the app and the LED-screen content were redesigned. The app was redesigned to have a more professional design, more competing elements and information was cleared up to make the user experience more intuitive. For the LED-screen, also a more professional and subtle design was made, as well as more privacy choices and more interface variations to keep the users curious. Finally, it could be concluded that by designing a digital mobile application and a physical LED-screen, together with offering real-life rewards that, when combined, engage and motivate users to increase bicycle usage and promote cycling. The main discussion point of this research is that no respondents living in Zeeland had responded, however bicycle behavior in the Netherlands is comparable, so the results can be reflected on the situation in Zeeland as well. Additionally, it is assumed that the new app and LED-screen give better results than the version of the app that was evaluated. To properly test this, real-life situation tests would have to be conducted to get a good insight into this. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 55 traffic technology, transport technology |
| Programme: | Creative Technology BSc (50447) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/82716 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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