Fresh Grease
Stay on top of bicycle maintenance
Role: Principal Designer
Timeline: 2 Weeks
Background
Bike components come from any number of different manufacturers with their own idiosyncratic service types and intervals. But unlike a car, a bike doesn’t have an onboard computer to tell you when service is due. Consequently, keeping track of bike maintenance is too complicated for most cyclists. Many simply wait until something is clearly wrong before taking their bike in for service—at which point, what should have been a small problem often becomes much more severe—and expensive to address.
How might we…
Make it easier to stay on top of of bike maintenance ?
Research and iteration
Being a regular cyclist myself I knew we had the beginnings of an idea, but I conducted personal interviews with members of my local mountain bike community to test the hypothesis and look for additional insight. Through this research the hypothesis was validated, but I also learned that a similar problem exists in adjacent market segments such as watercraft and ATVs.
“Brakes and whatnot are obvious because you can go by feel, but suspension is like… it’s too slow. It happens over too much time.”
— Mike
“I’ve taken my bike to the shop for a shock service and they’re like ‘Yeah, we have to do a full rebuild’ because I waited too long.”
— Devon
“Oh I have no idea.”
— Karl, when asked about his suspensions’s service intervals
Solution
The solution is straightforward, and requires two parts: a thorough database of service intervals for bicycle parts, and a way to log the hours of usage of a given component on a user’s bike. Any worthwhile bike component includes recommendations for when to get service, which is generally based on hours of use, so building and maintaining the database is entirely feasible.
Logging time spent on a particular bike is a solved problem—Strava is an extremely popular app for logging fitness activities that already gives users the option to specify the bike they use on a given ride. For a first iteration, the Strava API would provide the usage data needed.
Fresh Grease, then, would match those service intervals from the database to time logged via Strava. The app would give users the ability to log maintenance, update their bike with new components, and could even offer additional value like suspension setup guides or service shop recommendations.
Simple tabbed navigation makes it easy to see upcoming maintenance, either by individual part or by the bike as a whole. A lengthy list of parts could be easily filtered by part type, i.e. suspension or brakes.
Each bike’s “Profile” includes lists of both upcoming and completed maintenance. Users can swipe left or right to quickly check the status of multiple bicycles.
The “Rides” tab gives users a way to validate that the rides they record on Strava are appropriately synced and logging the accurate time on their bikes’ respective parts.
Results and Reflections
A friend and I worked collaboratively to develop this concept. Though I was not in a position to take any big risks at the time, I was happy to build an interactive prototype that he could use to pitch as a startup. After a few meeting with potential investors, he was able to secure funding for a broader version of the idea aimed at powersports and renamed FreshGrease.