The royal way to explore
Challenge
A high quality e-bike with a revolutionary navigation cockpit
We helped Kingo to provide sightseers with a fun, novel and healthy way of exploring the places they visit, while being at the wheel of their own experience.
“A smart guide e-bike, equipped with fascinating routes for tourists to explore."
Approach
Everybody Kingo?
The hotels and the tourists are only two groups of stakeholders within the Kingo service system. To thoroughly understand all of Kingo’s players, we organized co-creation workshops with users, who fit the Kingo profiles. This helped us to form a complete picture, to cater to their needs and wishes and to provide them with exciting value propositions.
Shaping our ideas
Through sketches, basic 3D models and rough breadboards, we explored valuable solutions for the many challenges at hand. This included the general cockpit build-up, attachment to the bike, waterproofing and integration of connectors, speakers, power button and other design constraints. Thanks to our experience, a thorough analysis of the e-bikes market, and Kingo's company values, we could quickly list requirements for the bike frame and all of its components. To start talks with potential suppliers, we created a smart photo montage of existing frames, newly developed components and graphic decals which simulated the perfect Kingo e-bike.
Innovative electronics
Zenso, our privileged partner for state-of-the-art electronic design, took care of the internal hardware. Together we selected components and checked for potential interference with the housing and their detailed 3D model of the PCB. Joining forces, we solved problems regarding thermoregulation, cable management, and faster assembly.
User interface of the navigation cockpit
The digital user interface has a 1024 x 600 resolution touchscreen and provides the user with different route options. On time notifications of points of interest and points of eating and drinking give the user information in a way that was never seen before. Using barebone wireframes we constructed the structure of the app, the icons, and the animations that will support the user having a new way of experiencing an e-bike ride. In every wireframe iteration the icon design and styling of the app were evaluated and redirected to meet the needs of the end-user until it was deemed a perfect fit.
Prototyping
By sourcing the right parts and materials, within budget, we could quickly perform tests on the first prototypes. Checking waterproofness, finetuning antenna placement, and evaluating readability of different displays we were able verify these critical functionalities in an early stage of the design process.
"Customer journeys, experience maps and service blueprints delivered a list of challenging requirements.”
Concept
The most comfortable way to discover an area
The Kingo Smart Bike is a connected e-bike equipped with a 10 inch cockpit that operates as a true bicycle board computer. It displays real-time telemetric bike data, such as speed, battery percentage and distance, and has a high-end bicycle navigation system. The Kingo Explore App itself offers an on-board digital touristic cycle map with three different navigation options. In the ‘discover the region’ modus, tourists can freely explore the region. The map on screen shows the cycle networks and touristic highlights of the region. Together with the ‘search by address’ option, the cyclist is in full charge to adapt his journey at any given moment. Finally, ‘predefined routes’ with points of interests to visit offer tourists full guidance for their trip.
The result
The royal way!
After a few iterations, Kingo could launch the bikes at a fine selection of hotels. At this very moment customers are enjoying the Kingo experience.
Achilles Design was the perfect match for us as a startup: from first design thinking and ideation sketches to photorealistic renderings and prototyping techniques. All steps made it easier for us to validate our assumptions."