2023
Suzuki Motorcycle India Pvt Ltd
Suzuki Ride Connect
My Role
Solo Product Designer
Platform
Android + iOS
Duration
~6 weeks
Industry
Suzuki Motorcycle India
Overview
Suzuki Ride Connect is the official mobile companion app for Suzuki two-wheelers in India, designed to connect riders with their vehicles via Bluetooth and provide navigation, alerts, and ride insights directly on the instrument cluster.
This project was executed in collaboration with Suzuki India’s technology partner. While the product team defined the feature set, my responsibility was to transform those features into a usable, reliable, and habit-forming experience for real riders.
I led the design end-to-end as a solo product designer, covering research, information architecture, interaction design, and system-level UX decisions across the app.
3–4
Month Sprint
120k+
Active Installs
8+
Features Redesigned
1
Yes, me - Solo Designer
Core problem
With thousands of riders using this app daily, I identified several significant problems that were causing them to abandon it — often within the first two weeks of ownership. I categorised them into core and secondary problems based on their abandonment impact
Core Problem 01
Product lacked behavioral relevance
The app offered multiple features—vehicle stats, navigation, alerts—but didn’t fit naturally into a rider’s daily behavior. Riders opened the app only when necessary, not as part of a habit loop, making the product feel optional rather than essential.
Core Problem 02
Navigation was buried 4+ taps deep
Riders had to browse through menus just to start a journey — the app's primary use case. Most switched to Google Maps permanently by step two of the old flow.
Core Problem 03
Value was not contextual or timely
Critical features existed but lacked the right timing and context. Insights weren’t surfaced when they mattered (e.g., during or right after rides), making useful features feel invisible or irrelevant in real usage moments.
Core Problem 04
Ride analytics existed but was invisible
Trip data was collected silently, buried in menus riders never opened. A feature with genuine value that effectively didn't exist for 90% of users.
I aimed to enhance two key business outcomes
Improve 60-day Retention
I observed that riders who successfully used navigation and trusted the app's pairing flow returned daily. Fixing the friction-to-feature gap would directly drive sustained usage beyond the first two weeks.
Increase Feature Adoption Rate
New features like Digital Wallet and Service Alerts were invisible to riders who never completed first-time setup. I needed to ensure riders could actually reach what Suzuki had built — not just that the features existed.
What I Was Responsible For
UX Research & Discovery
I interviewed 14 existing riders, ran 6 new buyer sessions post-purchase, spoke with 3 stakeholders, coded 160+ app store reviews into categories, and audited 3 competitor apps — all before designing a single screen.
Information Architecture
I rebuilt the app's structure from scratch around four rider-first pillars — replacing organic feature sprawl with an IA that made every feature, old and new, logically discoverable.
Flow & Interaction Design
I designed every flow state — not just happy paths. All four connection states, empty analytics, error recovery, biometric fallback — covered in mid-fidelity before visual design started.
UI & Visual System
I built a dark-first design system with Suzuki red as the primary action colour — minimum 44px touch targets throughout, readable at 60 km/h with gloved hands on a mounted phone.
Who Is Actually Riding
Before designing anything, I needed to understand who was on the other side of the screen. Three distinct rider types emerged from my research — each with a different relationship to the app, different levels of patience for setup, and different moments when the product either earned or lost their trust.
How the Industry Compares
Before designing a single screen, I audited three competitors who launched or significantly updated their apps in 2023 in India — TVS Connect, Honda RoadSync, and Hero Connect. I wanted to understand the category benchmark, where Ride Connect was behind, and where there was a genuine UX opportunity that no one had addressed yet.
What Riders Actually Said
I spent two weeks listening before I opened Figma. I interviewed daily commuters in Bengaluru traffic, weekend riders in Chennai, first-time buyers fresh from showrooms, and the stakeholders who built the product. I wanted to understand one thing: riders clearly wanted to use this app — so why weren't they?
23+
Participants Across 3 Groups
14
Existing Riders Interviewed
6
New Buyers (Post-Purchase)
160+
App Store Reviews Coded
New Buyer Sessions — The First-Hour Experience
"I downloaded it in the showroom parking lot. Tried to pair three times. Nothing. Uninstalled and reinstalled. Still nothing. I just gave up and drove home."
Arjun, 26 · Gixxer SF 250 · Hosur
First Launch Failure
"I expected it to connect automatically when I got on the bike — like how a car Bluetooth works. I didn't know I had to do something on the console first."
Priya, 24 · Access 125 · Hosur
Mental Model Mismatch
"There was no 'you're all set.' It just sat there after setup. I wasn't sure if it had worked or not. I closed and reopened it twice just to check."
Nandini, 27 · Avenis · Bengaluru
First Launch Failure
The most common feedback from the users
Every participant expressed genuine interest in connected features. Abandonment was situational — morning time pressure, one failed attempt — not attitudinal.
9 of 14 riders cited the morning commute specifically. Tolerance for setup failure: under 45 seconds when already late.
The app doing nothing — no spinner, no message — caused more frustration than even a bad error dialog. Uncertainty cost more than time.
Riders who found trip data became power users. Those who hadn't found it didn't know it existed. This was an IA fix, not a feature build.
All 14 interviewed had experienced a checkpoint scramble. Privacy concern was the one condition to wallet adoption — solved with a single sentence.
Every new buyer session I ran ended in abandonment before first successful pairing. Day-one excitement converting to frustration within 8 minutes.
How I Approached Each Problem
So I reframed every design brief around one thing: what is the specific friction between a rider's intent and the outcome they want? Remove that, and adoption follows naturally. Here's how I framed each problem before I opened Figma:
All participants showed real interest in connected features. The problem wasn’t the idea of the product, but the effort required to use it. Most users dropped off after facing repeated friction, not because they didn’t want the features.
Most riders mentioned their daily commute as the key moment of failure. When they were already running late, they had very little patience. If setup or pairing didn’t work within 30–45 seconds, they stopped trying.
Users found it more frustrating when the app didn’t respond or gave no feedback. Not knowing whether to wait or retry created confusion. A clear error message was easier to handle than uncertainty.
Trip data was already being collected, but many users couldn’t find it. Those who discovered it found it useful and engaging. This showed that the issue was not missing features, but poor visibility and structure.
Most riders had faced situations where they had to quickly show vehicle documents. This created stress, especially during checkpoints. A digital solution was not expected by users, but once introduced, it had clear value. The only concern was around privacy.
My Process
I resolved every IA decision and flow priority at low fidelity before I designed a single screen. This protects against the most expensive mistake in product design: building a beautiful solution to the wrong problem. Challenges included balancing feature depth with usability, designing around platform constraints I couldn't eliminate, and ensuring every error state was as considered as every success state.
The Structure I built
The first thing I noticed about the old app was that its structure reflected the order features were built, not the order riders needed them. I rebuilt the IA from scratch around how riders actually think about a riding session — not around how a product backlog was organised.
Flow by Flow
Every major flow was redesigned — not just reskinned. For each one, I'll walk you through what the old experience looked like, what I changed, and — most importantly — why I made those specific decisions.
What Changed
Implementing these improvements had a meaningful impact on how riders engaged with the app. The measure of this redesign wasn't how it looked — it was whether riders behaved differently. Here's what post-launch signals showed.
Metrics marked (est.) are estimated projections based on post-launch review sentiment analysis and qualitative interviews. Framed as learning benchmarks, not reported figures.
“Test on actual bikes, not in interview rooms.”
Interviews helped, but missed real usage constraints. Observing riders in context (helmet, gloves, time pressure) would have exposed key friction points. Future approach: prioritize in-context usability testing.
“Competitive analysis should precede structural decisions.”
Key insights from competitors came too late, after core flows were defined. Going forward, deep competitive analysis should inform IA and primary flows before wireframing.
“Quick Start Guide search should be a day-one requirement.”
Search was added late, despite clear user need for guidance. It should have been defined early as a core requirement, not an afterthought.
“Feature availability ≠ feature accessibility.”
The app had features, but poor access paths. If users can’t reach a feature, it effectively doesn’t exist. Future focus: audit and optimize accessibility before adding new features.
If I Continued
Through this project, I developed a clear picture of where the product could go next. These are the directions I would push for in the next iteration — grounded in what my research participants said they wished existed, and aligned with where Suzuki India's business growth strategy is heading.
Crash Detection & Emergency Assist
Accelerometer-based fall detection with automatic emergency contact alert + GPS location after a 30-second inactivity threshold. Moves Ride Connect from navigation tool to genuine safety companion — the category differentiator no competitor has deployed.
Proactive Smart Routing
Routes recommended from the rider's own destination history and typical departure times — surfaced before the search bar is even opened. Karthik's morning routine is 36 km on ORR, every weekday at 8:45am. The app already has that data. It should surface "Leave now — 42 min, moderate traffic" without being asked.
Ride Score & Weekly Coaching
Weekly riding behaviour summary with personalised fuel efficiency tips. Rahul's exact request — "same energy as checking my Spotify Wrapped." Transforms analytics from a passive log into an active improvement tool. Strong retention driver: weekly personalised notifications create durable return habit.
Live Vehicle Health Dashboard
Real-time tyre pressure, battery voltage, engine temperature, and fuel level from OBD sensors. Requires next-generation Suzuki hardware — the UX groundwork for this surface is already present in the vehicle profile card design. Once hardware catches up, the design is ready.
You Have Reached the End!
Research is the design brief:
The most valuable thing the qualitative research gave me wasn't a list of problems — it was specific, human moments attached to each problem. When I designed the pairing error states, I wasn't designing for an abstract frustrated user. I was designing for Suresh's 40 failed attempts and Deepa's fear that her bike itself was broken. That specificity changed the quality of every design decision. Named evidence moves faster than general insight.
Designing for physical contexts raises every stake:
Most apps are designed for someone sitting comfortably with full attention. Ride Connect is used by someone at 60 km/h, wearing a helmet, possibly gloved, with a phone mounted at eye level while managing a vehicle. Every decision — touch target size, contrast ratio, error message length — had a physical consequence that a desk review couldn't simulate. Meenakshi's checkpoint moment and Karthik's morning commute were present in every screen I built.
Feature design vs experience design — I now understand the difference:
Suzuki knew what to build — that was product strategy. My job was ensuring every feature worked in a way that didn't require the rider to think about using it. That is experience design. The difference shows up most clearly in error states, empty states, and loading states — the moments that product managers often deprioritise and engineers often skip. Those are exactly the moments where riders form their lasting opinion of a product.
What I would do differently:
I would push harder for usability testing with riders in a real riding context — not just interview sessions in a room. Watching Karthik actually try to pair the app while sitting on his scooter in a parking lot would have given me information that 30 minutes of conversation couldn't. I also would have introduced the competitor analysis earlier — before the IA rebuild rather than during it. In future projects I'll treat competitive research as an input to IA work, not a parallel track.