Mobile App – Capstone Project
Bike Kollective
A mobile app for sharing bikes
Problem
Many people lack access to reliable, affordable transportation for short trips. Traditional bike-sharing services can be expensive or unavailable in smaller communities. Individuals who want to share bikes informally often lack a simple, trustworthy way to coordinate and manage those exchanges.
Solution
Bike Kollective is a mobile app that helps individuals borrow and lend bikes within their community. Users can register bikes, request access, and coordinate sharing all in one place—making informal bike-sharing accessible, transparent, and easy to manage for everyone.
Details
01/2025 - 03/2025
Team
Group Project with
Anita Ly and Jon Ramm
Contribution
Product Designer & Full-Stack Developer
Platform
Mobile App
User Flow Prototype
I mapped out the core navigation of a bike sharing app, starting from registration and login and moving through features like bike discovery, user profiles, and bike check-in. What stood out during this process was how quickly a simple list of screens could become a web of decisions—where one action might lead to multiple outcomes. Sketching the flow like this helped clarify how users would actually move through the app and made it easier to spot potential friction points before writing a single line of code.
Early Wireframes
The screens for The Bike Kollective came together with one guiding goal: make urban bike sharing feel effortless. Each step—from discovering a nearby ride to unlocking it—was designed to feel fast, familiar, and just a little bit fun. I leaned into clarity over complexity, building clean visuals and intuitive flows that don’t require a tutorial to use.
Design System
A lot of thought went into crafting a visual identity that felt both welcoming and efficient. The palette draws from urban and environmental tones—cool slate, concrete gray, and a pop of teal for vibrancy. I chose Open Sans for its clarity and legibility, ensuring the interface stayed approachable and easy to navigate for all types of riders.
Tech Stack
We built The Bike Kollective using React Native and TypeScript, leveraging Expo for rapid development and testing across iOS and Android. On the backend, Firebase Cloud Functions and Firestore gave us a fully serverless stack that scaled with ease. We integrated Google Cloud Storage for media, React Native Maps for GPS functionality, and Firebase Authentication for secure user sign-ins. Design was handled in Figma, and project management lived in Jira—making collaboration streamlined from start to finish.
Implementation
Bringing The Bike Kollective to life meant translating big ideas into clean, functional code. From building interactive map views to integrating cloud-based checkouts and lock combinations, we focused on making every step feel intuitive. This demo showcases how our frontend and backend systems—built with React Native and Firebase—work seamlessly to deliver a smooth user experience from sign-in to ride completion.
Reflections
Key Takeaways
Planning prevents panic – One of the most valuable takeaways from this project was how much time and confusion we saved by building a detailed project plan from day one. Clear expectations, realistic deadlines, and proactive communication gave our team a foundation to work from.
Designing for real-world complexity – It’s one thing to prototype a user flow; it’s another to account for lockouts, missing bikes, accident waivers, and usage rules—all while keeping the experience frictionless. We learned how to juggle nuance and user trust in a system that needs to feel simple even when it isn’t.
Tech as a tool for change – Building The Bike Kollective reminded us that software can do more than streamline—it can transform how we share, move, and reduce waste. Designing for purpose made every design choice more meaningful.