Co-creating a bike leasing portal

The context

A portal already leading the market

The client is a German bike leasing platform and subsidiary of a major bicycle mobility group, as well as one of the leading bicycle leasing portals in Germany, serving employers, employees, and dealers across the country. Their portal had already won top marks from users. The brief was not to fix something broken. It was to leap ahead of the competition.

The project was nearly fully remote, involving a multinational team across the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Albania, and India. My role as UX designer was to lead the design work end-to-end, from the initial co-creation workshops on-site in Germany to the final validated redesign.

The redesign journey

Five stages, one direction

The project moved through five distinct phases: understanding the context on-site in Nürnberg, identifying the right voice and future user journey, a successful pivot in design direction, user validation, and finally bringing the redesigned elements together.

Design sprint

Three days to map the future

We used a design sprint to create the most premium bike leasing service. Day one covered the status quo: reviewing the existing portal, mapping the as-is journey, creating personas, and setting OKRs. Day two focused on the future journey: enhancing the as-is map, prioritising ideas from the parking lot, and creating the future journey. Day three was design and iteration, with a golden thread, first sketches, and wireframes.

Three-day design sprint with the client team on-site in Germany

Making remote work

Four mechanisms for distributed co-design

Working remotely with a client across two countries required a deliberate collaboration structure. We built four mechanisms to keep design and client aligned throughout the project.

Design and development

Two sides, same coin

Since we were designing for production, we were in constant conversation with our development team about feasibility. One key decision: our initial design used modal views to convey persistence across the flow. After consulting with developers, we learned the implementation effort for modals was high. We pivoted to full-screen views, which ultimately produced a cleaner experience.

User validation

Validating with the client in the room

Prototype and research plan were handed over to our German colleague, who ran the user validation sessions on-site. Outcomes were recorded on Figma and consolidated into a report for the client. Having the client team join the online validation sessions had two key advantages: it was their first time doing user validation, and they received first-hand insight into what users actually feel when using their product.

The employer request review flow

One of the core flows redesigned was the employer-side request review. When an employee requests a bike, the employer receives a notification and must review and approve it. The prototype below shows the full redesigned flow. Switch between a first-time request and a returning user to see how it adapts.

What did this mean for me