Spin's First Custom Scooter
At Spin I led a team that conceived and executed development of the company's first scooter designed in-house. In a new industry with very little precedent or reliable data, and a lot of hype, figuring out what our product would need in the future was difficult. While sharing scooters have some unique design considerations, the actual development process was fairly standard.
To separate fact from fiction and predict future needs, I and my team talked to different groups throughout the company. We asked them about their current challenges operating and deploying scooters as well as what direction they saw the industry going in. We sat down with the company executives to ask about their goals for the company to ensure that the new scooter would meet those needs. We also looked outside the company: at regulations, competitors, and user studies of other scooters on the market
From those discussions and research, the team identified simplicity and durability as key areas to focus on. We produced a list of specific features, high level design principles, and combined these into a cohesive overall design.
Next, we identified key manufacturing partners, to leverage their expertise, and built prototypes to test the design until it could be refined into production-ready plans. We then entered the usual phases of building, validating, and refining the design until it was ready to deploy.
