SmoothRide
Your AIdvisor for future-proof infrastructure & more livable places
SmoothRide / InfrastructureGPT is a mobile-first civic tech platform that empowers citizens to report, ideate, and reimagine their local cycling infrastructure—using nothing more than a photo. By combining AI-generated insights, location-aware automation, and contextual interaction design, SmoothRide radically simplifies how people participate in shaping better public spaces.
A frictionless entry point into urban innovation, designed for the street, not the spreadsheet.
Challenge & Vision
In most cities today, giving feedback on infrastructure is tedious:
- You need to find the right form, the right words, the right tone
- You often never hear back
- It's geared towards complainers, not collaborators
SmoothRide reframes participation as something accessible, visual, contextual—and even fun. It invites citizens to contribute experiences, not just complaints, and rewards them with AI-powered inspiration, global best practices, and sharable insights.
---
UX Goals
Design for the Street, Not the Office
People shouldn't need policy jargon to report potholes or unsafe intersections.
SmoothRide works on the go, in the moment, in the real world.
- Mobile-first design
- Location auto-detection from EXIF image data
- No forms to fill—just upload a photo, adjust tags, and go
- Face and plate blurring to protect privacy instantly
Lower the Barriers to Participation
“I want to help improve my city—but I don’t know how or where to start.”
That’s the voice I designed for.
SmoothRide allows:
- Reporting without writing long descriptions
- Visual tagging over verbose categorization
- Inspiration as a byproduct of participation
- Immediate value without platform lock-in
Bridge the Gap Between The Phyisical and Digital
Cycling happens in the real world—SmoothRide embraces that:
- The platform starts from a photo taken on the street
- Turns that into structured data, discussion, and action
- Connects global knowledge to local problems—instantly
UX Methodology
The project followed a user-centered design process, focused on reducing friction and increasing impact at every step:
1. Contextual Research
- Field observation at cycling hotspots, fairs (VeloBerlin, polisMOBILITY), and activist meetups
- Interviews with cyclists, urbanists, city planners, and civic tech users
- Comparative UX audit of Mängelmelder and other citizen-reporting platforms
2. Problem Framing
- Framed infrastructure as an interface
- Focused on intentional ambiguity: report an issue or share an idea
- Developed use cases for both citizens and urban planners
3. Prototyping & Testing
- Wireframes, lo-fi clickable prototypes
- Quant-UX testing for flow efficiency
- In-person feedback sessions at events with mobility professionals
- Iterative refinement of flows, especially for non-tech-savvy users
4. AI-Augmented Ideation
- Implemented OpenAI API to generate context-specific suggestions
- Let users rate ideas, making AI accountable and teachable
- Matched AI ideas to real best practices and YouTube videos for grounding
Key Features
- 📷 Upload a photo → auto-detect tags and location
- 🤖 Get AI-generated suggestions for how to improve the spot
- 🌍 Explore examples and real case studies from around the world
- 📤 Share your report in local networks, in your local language
- 🧭 Benchmark your city via scraped ADFC cycling report data
Tech Stack (briefly)
- Frontend: Vue 3 (mobile-first PWA)
- Backend: Flask API
- Database: PocketBase
- AI: GPT-4 via OpenAI
- Object Detection: YOLOv8 custom model
- Deployment: Dockerized frontend/backend, auto-deploy script
Impact & Next Steps
- Version 1.5 launched, with real reports being submitted and shared
- Targeting municipality partnerships to integrate with official workflows
- Used as a design research probe and platform to test future participation formats
Personal Learnings
- Learned how to build a product from scratch, across full-stack boundaries
- Gained confidence using AI tools as collaborators in design
- Bridged the physical and digital realm of UX—designing not just interfaces, but moments
- Learned how to test civic tech in public, not just in theory
- Reinforced the value of low-barrier, high-impact UX
Reflection
“Urban infrastructure is an interface. Let’s treat it that way.”
SmoothRide was built not just as a tool, but as an invitation—to contribute, to co-create, to reimagine the streets you ride on. I believe civic participation can be a designed experience, and that digital tools, when rooted in empathy and context, can turn everyday riders into everyday changemakers.