An Exploratory Physical Computing Toolkit for Rapid Exploration and Co-Design of On-Bicycle User Interfaces

Cycling offers significant health and environmental benefits,but safety remains a critical issue. We need better tools and design processes to develop on-bicycle user interfaces, for example, for hazard warnings, and to overcome design challenges associated with the cycling context. We present a physical computing toolkit that supports the rapid exploration and co-design of on-bicycle interfaces. Physical plug-and-play interaction modules controlled by an orchestration interfac eallow participants to explore different tangible and ambient interaction approaches on a budget cycling simulator. The toolkit was assessed by analysing video recordings of two group design workshops (N=8) and twelve individual design sessions (N=12). Our results show that the toolkit enabled flex-ible transitions between ideation and out-of-the-box thinking,prototyping, and immediate evaluation. We offer insights on how to design physical computing toolkits that offer low-cost,‘good enough’ simulation while allowing for free and safee xploration of on-bicycle user interface