Shiyao
Joy Ride is a bus-transportation mobile app that provides a live schedule for bus riders who live in Minnesota state.
If you have ever taken a bus, or is taking a bus, you probably have experienced the following -
• Not confident enough about when the next bus will arrive at your stop (schedule is never accurate)
• Not sure how much time you have to get to the bus stop before your bus gets there. Feeling nervous because afraid the bus will arrive earlier and leave earlier.
* The people lives in a little town in Minnesota are complaining about the bus lines at Washington & State bus stop. Multiple bus-lines have recently been added and that lead different buses to stop at the same bus station. As a result, sometimes people take the wrong bus to the wrong destination.
I have created a bus-transportation app that provides functionalities which can fulfill the core needs of bus-riders, take Washington & State Bus Stop as an example:
• Ensure that all riders can tell how much time they have to get to the Washington & State bus stop before the bus they need arrives at that stop.
• Ensure that any rider can tell when each of the buses arrives at the Washington & State bus stop.
• Allow riders to select one of seven bus lines to see a list of its future arrival times at the Washington & State bus stop.
There are already many bus transportation app available in the app store. I have downloaded most of them, kept the ones that I think has good functionalities. Then I spent a few days studying them and finally I made a conclusion using the SWOT (Strength/Weakness/Opportunities/Threats) analysis.
My user survey's objective is to find out what most bus riders are complaining about, what apps they are using/have been using, what they like or dislike about them. As well as what features they’d like to see on a bus transportation app.
• Bus app users top need is to check route schedule, the second need is want to be reminded of the bus is coming, rest want to check nearby stations
• Almost half of bus app users feel insecure riding a bus without using a bus app
• 30 out of 49 participants have experienced being late to destination and/or miss catching bus because of not-up-to-date schedule
After gathering the data from the survey, I want to have a follow-up user interview session with one of the participants. This helps to erase my subjectivity and my assumption - it helps me to be closer with my user and grow with this project. I think I've found the best participant, who considers himself a digital hoarder.
• Prefer to avoid taking the bus because of negative experiences
• Most transit apps are not intuitive, still have to hunt hard for information
• Some features are distractive and not helpful
• Wish it has an additional feature of paying bus fare
• Prefer google/apple map because can see location visually
I created three major personas based on the insights taken out from the user survey and the user interview results. The personas represent the major audiences of the app, their needs, expectations and pain-points. User personas really help me to set the idea of the app and understand what features need to be there.
"As a student, I want to know the exact time my bus is coming, so that I can spend less effort running catching the bus"
"As an employee, I want to see the up to date timeline and route of every bus line, so that I can do other things instead of waiting at the bus station for an unnecessarily long time"
"As a traveler / visitor, I want to know where is the nearest bus station, so that I don't need to worry to take other transportation and this better save me some money"
After using major competitive apps for a few days, I started to have an image of what I want the flow to be. Here's the the whole user flow chart I created in Lucid-Chart:
The site-map will be simple and serve the user's goal as directly as possible. Rather than requiring users to sign in, I have made it optional.
While I'm sketching, I kept in mind that what I think will benefits the app users - I want the interface to be friendly as well as functional. Modern transportation apps have too much information which can be quite overwhelming to look at, and some apps require users to sign up before use. I want to break down such complex by making the sign-in optional (the only time you will need to sign in is to purchase bus fare from the app). I want this app to serve users main-need as quick as possible.
When talking about taking a bus or using a bus app, people often associate it with the feeling of laziness, tediousness, and some even associate it with fear due to negative experiences in the past. Therefore, I want to cherish people by creating a minimalistic interface with positive colors like yellow, orange, and blue. I want to increase the bus-riding experience and make people looking forward to taking a bus.
I incorporate the positive mood into the previous design and played around with the font size, color usage, and map. I hope the final prototype can evoke a feeling of cleanliness and comfort for users. I have also adapted some modern patterns used by Uber and Lyft, such as the swipe up feature, the search feature, and the “recent” feature.
Click Image below to walk through the interactive prototype! - Link will open in an external window.
I went through three rounds of usability testing, let the users play with the clickable prototype to go through basic tasks, and I took notes and planned to implement the changes.
In the first part of usability testing, I asked participants to perform task (as if they are regular bus riders) and observe where they felt stuck or confused.
In the second part of usability testing, I asked participants to share their honest opinions with me, and took down the notes.
Since this was one of my very first ux design case study, I often forget the fact that I know nothing about my users and often felt like I know them enough. After all, it was just a project of myself and my personal-opinion. I need to keep in mind that I know nothing about my users (even I gathered enough information, there are still a lot to know). All my assumptions may fail. A design would be meaningless without a research + usability test.
I realized as a new designer, I realize I have the drive of making something visually beautiful or fancy to impress people, without even achieving the functionalities at first. Product design is not "not about visual", but "less about visual". An app should serve the users' goals directly. The design should not kick-in before the functionalities are even settled on the app.
This again, is a new feeling as I just stepped into the ux design industry. Feeling attached to my design might be natural, but I need to practice to be more distant about it - only then, I could view my design more objectively and from a more professional point of view. Ultimately, I'm not designing for myself, but for people who truly needs such product. I learned that always be ready to make changes, and accept new perspectives.
