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Role:
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My role was to research understand user needs, their pain points through user interviews and deliver a mobile app Design that will provide users with an easy user interface to track buses real time.
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Users and Audience:
The Bus Catcher App caters to the needs of the daily local transit users, numbering in the thousands. It addresses the challenges faced by multiple riders taking different buses from the same stop, particularly during peak morning hours. By reducing anxiety and providing accurate bus tracking, it aims to alleviate the disappointment caused by buses frequently running behind schedule.
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The Discovery:
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Using research and interview questions to understand user mental models with a few sample users, listening to their issues and pain points and practicing asking interview questions that do not add bias to the user’s responses.
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User painpoints included:
1. Inability to get real time info on arrival times.
2. Complex way to find bus schedules.
3. No On-the-go app to see bus activity details.
Competitive Analysis
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Using research and interview questions to understand user mental models with a few sample users, listening to their issues and pain points and practicing asking interview questions that do not add bias to the user’s responses.
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DC Bus Tracker
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Strengths:
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Had options for bus and train routes.
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Already had a map display
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Weakness:
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Map display wasn’t illustrative enough.
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UI Design was clunky and not very clear.
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More usage of colors could benefit users to understand how soon a bus was arriving.
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Moovit
Strengths:
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had a great display with dynmaic updates
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could set home and work loactions for easy access
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took location and provided nearby routes
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used iconography well
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Weakness:
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too many ads
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could not get a idea of frequency easily
The Problem, the Challenge
Bus schedules were available but unpredictable. Commuters were frustrated with the uncertainty of the bus arriving per schedule and felt anxiety and panic to reach their bus stop on time knowing very well that the bus may not be on time.
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Solution, Scope & Constraints
The high level goals were to:
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Reduce commuter anxiety by providing dynamic real time bus tracking.
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Provide easy to use, simple to navigate solutions keeping in mind that the commuters are people ‘on the go’
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Track user analytics to learn best from user behavior and for continuous improvement on user engagement.
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The buses themselves were equipped with infrastructure to be able to track their movement, but there was more work required to map them with the bus stops. orking with hypothetical data on bus routes may present with some gaps when real time data is available. Once we were able to get a comprehensive map and track working for all routes, we were able to provide design to enable commuters with a simple and easy way to track the bus and its proximity.
The Process: Design by Iteration
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It was important to concise the problem and map out what is most important to deliver towards this design solution. This was done through user interviews, working on Journey and empathy maps, doing competitive analysis, and figuring out what I can provide that combats these issues but has its uniqueness.
Once scope was confirmed, I worked on defining user stories, sketching out user flows and defining the information architecture and general structure of the designs.
Next step was to work on wireframes in grayscale to get a general idea of how I’d like to have my designs done. After which I moved on to create the prototypes.
It was important to receive feedback on the wireframe and prototypes and document it, so I could understand the gaps and work on enhancing them. This iterative designing helped achieve something that looked more clean and aligned to the design goals.
User journey
Walking through the user's mental model by jotting a user journey . It was insightful to understand user's emotions and deep needs for this use case.
Persona
A four grid Persona illustration to understand the User for the Bus Tracker App.
User Stories
1. As a bus rider, I want to know when my bus is arriving at the Washington & State bus stop, so I can calculate how much time I have to reach the bus stop.
2. As a bus rider, I want to know the next bus arriving at the Washington & State bus stop, so that I don’t rush to the bus stop if it is not my bus.
3. As a bus rider, I want the ability to view future arrival times for any of the seven bus lines (serving Washington & State), so that I know when my bus arrives.
4. As a bus rider, I want the ability to favorite my Frequent stops, and bus routes for easy look up when I log in to the app.
Information Architecture
User Flows
Test, Learn, Improve
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Users when adding favorites were confused due to the animation displaying a move in screen when route/stop was favorited.
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Include navigation to back and home for easier seamless transition even if a prototype
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Make sure animation and iconography is consistent
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I incorporated feedback from user testing to improve designs and make it more seamless
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Wrap up
The bus tracker app was a great first case study. A lot of learning went into the process of designing mobile user interfaces. At the end of this exercise I was able to deliver close to real world designs for a Bus tracking app. A lot of real but relative data was used to demonstrate designs, and the strength of what the app can provide to users.
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Main successes for the app was the ability to concise the flow for the primary goal of the app, and also the fact that secondary useful features like viewing Route details , favoriting stops and routes were provided.
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Some failures/improvements for future I would consider are to be able to make the app more personalized for user, to make it more comprehensive for all things the bus tracking and managing can provide like purchasing tickets etc.
I would also in the future, enhance the app by making it more modernized in color and brand development.