A few weeks ago, I decided to try an e-bike hailing app.
My first impression was positive.
The interface looked clean, modern, and easy to use. Finding the “Start Trip” option took no effort at all.
Then I hit a problem.
There wasn’t a single bike anywhere near me.
That wasn’t surprising. Bikes move around, so availability changes throughout the day.
What surprised me was what the app expected me to do next.
It immediately prompted me to scan the QR code on the bike to start my trip.
There was just one problem.
I didn’t have a bike to scan.
The step the journey forgot
At that moment, I realised something.
The app assumed I was already standing next to a bike.
From the product’s perspective, the journey began at the bike.
From my perspective, it began much earlier.
My first goal wasn’t to unlock a bike.
It was to find one.
Those are two completely different journeys.
The physical world is part of the experience.
This experience reminded me that some products don’t exist entirely on a screen.
Food delivery apps depend on restaurants preparing orders.
Ride-hailing apps depend on drivers reaching you.
Navigation apps depend on roads, traffic, and weather.
Bike-sharing apps depend on something even more basic.
The bike has to be where the user can actually reach it.
That physical context isn’t separate from the user experience.
It is the user experience.
The product started the journey at the bike. I started the journey from where I was standing.
Designing for prerequisites
It got me thinking about something I don’t think we discuss enough.
Every user journey has prerequisites.
Some are digital.
Some are physical.
Some are environmental.
If those prerequisites aren’t met, the rest of the journey doesn’t matter.
In this case, the prerequisite wasn’t authentication.
It wasn’t payment.
It wasn’t onboarding.
It was simply:
“Can the user actually get to a bike?”
The interface never acknowledged that question.
What could have happened instead?
Imagine opening the app and seeing:
“The nearest bike is a 4-minute walk away.”
With a clear walking route.
A button that says “Navigate to Bike.”
Maybe even an estimated walking time before unlocking becomes available.
Now the app isn’t just helping me unlock a bike.
It’s helping me achieve my real goal.
The journey starts before the product thinks it does
One thing I’ve started noticing is that products often define the beginning of a journey differently from users.
Products tend to start where the system becomes involved.
Users start much earlier.
Sometimes they start the moment they think,
“I need to get somewhere.”
Everything between that thought and the first interaction with the system is still part of the experience.
Ignoring it creates gaps that no amount of polished UI can fix.
Final thought
That experience reminded me that user journeys don’t begin when someone taps a button.
They begin when someone has a goal.
As designers, it’s easy to focus on what happens inside the interface because that’s what we’re building.
But users experience the product as part of their day, not as a collection of screens.
Sometimes the biggest improvements don’t come from redesigning the interface.
They come from stepping back and asking a simpler question:
What has to happen in the real world before any of this can actually work?
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