How bicycle maps and trip planners can represent experience

People who take utilitarian trips by bike – e.g., cycling to work, or to visit friends – do so because it’s fun. They choose pleasant and enjoyable routes. But existing bike trip planners neglect experience; it’s hard to know how enjoyable their suggested routes will be. By describing fun and enjoyment (or the lack thereof), an experiential trip planner could increase rates of cycling and improve cyclists’ quality of experience. In this thesis, I address the design of experiential trip planners: what they should communicate about experience and how to communicate it. My work has three major parts: (1) a framework describing the aspects of cycling experience; (2) a design exploration, culminating in prototype trip planners which try two different strategies of conveying experience; and (3) a qualitative study, to better understand the needs that an experiential trip planner can fill, and to evaluate the prototypes’ strategies for conveying experience.