Brotate and Tribike: Designing Smartphone Control for Cycling

TL;DR

This paper presents two innovative smartphone control devices for cyclists, enhancing safety and usability by allowing control without removing hands from handlebars, based on user-centered design and empirical evaluation.

Contribution

Introduces two novel on-bike smartphone control prototypes, Brotate and Tribike, developed through user-centered design and empirically tested for safety and usability improvements.

Findings

Brotate improved lateral control of the bicycle.

Both devices reduced cognitive load during smartphone use.

Participants successfully completed tasks with both devices.

Abstract

The more people commute by bicycle, the higher is the number of cyclists using their smartphones while cycling and compromising traffic safety. We have designed, implemented and evaluated two prototypes for smartphone control devices that do not require the cyclists to remove their hands from the handlebars - the three-button device Tribike and the rotation-controlled Brotate. The devices were the result of a user-centred design process where we identified the key features needed for a on-bike smartphone control device. We evaluated the devices in a biking exercise with 19 participants, where users completed a series of common smartphone tasks. The study showed that Brotate allowed for significantly more lateral control of the bicycle and both devices reduced the cognitive load required to use the smartphone. Our work contributes insights into designing interfaces for cycling.