Project Drive was designed in 2012 for a client who loved cycling and owned the Giant bike store in Liverpool.

The main idea was to allow for bike ride tracking, but with relative performance monitoring, opposed to using absolute values like other apps (consider Strava).

So when a user, let’s call her Jane, opens the drive app she may have been challenged by a friend to complete a ride, but we know Jane only rides once a week, for approximately 30 minutes. Whereas the challenger (let’s call him Jack) rides 5 times a week for an hour. How can these two users challenge each other and can compete.

By abstracting the challenge to point, and assigning points relatively to each user, anyone can compete with even the most experienced athletes. For example, a 3000 point ride for Jane may be a 1 hour ride, whereas a 3000 point ride for Jack may be two 2 hour rides. Leaderboards can then compare users rides on a level playing field.

We also considered factoring in environmental factors, for example bonus points could be awarded for users who ride in poor weather, or cold temperatures.

Although it was never build, much of the ideation and system specification was initially fleshed out.

Drive Presentation from Phil Hauser on Vimeo.