Bosch eBike Systems

I joined in November 2018 as UX Architect and worked on a feature that didn’t exist yet: a digital anti-theft protection for eBikes, controlled through the Bosch eBike app.

Due to NDA, I can’t show project artifacts. What I can show is how I approached the problem.

Design a digital theft protection for the eBike, controlled through the Bosch eBike app, with maximum security. Sounds simple until you list what can go wrong: the bike gets sold, the phone gets lost, or it breaks in the middle of a tour. A lock that only works on the happy path isn’t a lock.
On top of that, the feature sits at the intersection of three worlds: the drive unit, the embedded display and the smartphone. Each has its own technical constraints, and each stakeholder sees the feature through a different lens.

I looked for answers far beyond bikes. We started with extensive desk research, inside and outside the eBike industry. Theft protection is a problem that many industries have solved in their own way, and we wanted to learn from different contexts to broaden our horizon.
The climax of that research was a hands-on experiment. I ordered a Nuki Smart Lock and installed it on my own front door. It’s a door lock, not a bike lock, and that was exactly the point: I wanted to experience firsthand how a smartphone-controlled lock feels in daily life, from setup to everyday use to the moments where it lets you down.

I organized and facilitated several cross-team workshops with experts from engineering, customer service, marketing and more. That widened our pool of ideas and surfaced constraints early.
In big meetings, different professional vocabularies kept causing misunderstandings. As a visual thinker, the fix was obvious to me: I sketched all system components, users and devices and hung them on the whiteboard. Suddenly everyone was talking about the same component, the same connection, the same constraint. Meetings got shorter, and everyone was finally on the same page.

I developed the concept and user flow with the end user in mind, and built an interactive smartphone prototype (Sketch and Abstract). While my iOS developer counterpart worked with the Bosch engineers on the technical setup, I stayed close to users and stakeholders.
To validate the flow, we tested the prototype on site with users and recorded the sessions. The tests confirmed that the flow was easy to understand, and only minor tweaks were needed.

The concept became the Premium Feature Lock , launched for model year 2020 (autumn 2019). The feature didn’t exist before, so I was part of its very first launch and defined the entire user-facing part in the app.

Working on a subject with this many interdependencies and stakeholders taught me to explain decisions to people with very different backgrounds and priorities, and to always hold up the UX flag. It also shaped how I work today: bringing the perspectives of different experts into the solution is always worth the effort. Wherever it’s possible and necessary, I insist on it. It’s also the one thing I pass on to less experienced designers: look beyond the design bubble and approach challenges holistically.