Bus Buddy Case Study

CASE STUDY: BUS BUDDY

CREATING A RELIABLE BUS APP for CITY TRANSIT

Summary

When you think of City Transit, certain words might come to mind: reliable, trustworthy, punctual. When you look at a schedule for city transit, you would expect for your transportation to arrive at the listed time. Unfortunately for the bus system, this is not always the case. There are many obstacles that can get in the way of your city bus arriving on time. My goal was to create a trustworthy, reliable bus app that would alert its riders of the bus arrival times and let them know which bus was arriving at their stop.

VIEW THE PROTOTYPE

my contributions

Since I was limited to a design team of one, I was in charge of UX/UI design, UX research and analysis, information architecture, prototyping, usability testing, and the overall creation and design of this project.

Audience

This bus app was going to be made for it’s midwest users. The majority of bus users would be city dwellers and commuters. However, I wanted to make sure that the bus app would still function and be helpful for someone who was a first time rider.

Problem

Designing an app that would allow the users to see how much time they had to get to the bus stop before their bus arrived. The riders also would need to know which bus is arriving at their stop and when the next bus will be arriving. I needed to figure out a way for the bus company to communicate with its riders.

solution

My solution was to create a low-fidelity prototype for an app that provides the user with an intuitive but simple design to help them catch their bus. The goal was to help the rider know when the next bus was coming to their stop and which bus was arriving.

Check out the
low-fidelity
prototype

Discovery and research

screening survey

I conducted a survey that was posted on various forms of social media that had 36 participants. Unfortunately, this survey was conducted during the pandemic, so not a lot of users had taken the bus recently. However, I was still able to collect some very helpful information.

Survey results

From this survey I was able to determine that the majority of users go to their bus stop based off of the posted schedule. The other 47.4% used some sort of already existing mobile app.

user pain points

ETA of bus arrival time needs to be accurate
Would like a favorite option for bus routes or stops
Worried about missing the last bus that would get them to their destination on time.

Competitive analysis

I did a competitive analysis on Moovit, Transit Stop, Google Transit and Citymapper.

I determined that these apps did not have a lot of weaknesses, but the ones I did find, were surrounded by the user having to do a lot of extra clicking in order to get to their destination, or complete their goal. This can become aggravating for the user, so should be avoided if possible.
The apps also only show the scheduled time, they did not state the actual real time the bus will be arriving. Only Google Transit gave a popup if the bus is running off of schedule.

user interviews

After my competitive analysis I conducted several user interviews with participants from my user survey. All participants used apps so they could check what bus they need, etc. The users that lived in the city did not check for times because the buses near them run so frequently. However, for someone that lives in the suburbs, this is not the case. This meant I needed to find a way to please both ends of the spectrum.

user persona

Age: 37
Gender: Female
Status: Married
Location: Chicago
Occupation: Director of Ecommerce and Market Place

Catie has recently started a new job as the marketing director for a consumer brand company. She has a very busy but dynamic schedule and keeps a tight calendar. Catie relies heavily on her phone and is very comfortable with mobile applications. She tries to minimize her impact in the environment by using public transportation instead of driving everywhere. She loves going to the gym regularly and maintains a healthy lifestyle but enjoys sipping on tequila.

motivations +

Saving Time
Having extra time for self and family
Minimal effort and clicks for information

Frustrations +

Waiting for bus
Being late
Having to check her phone constantly to see when the bus is coming.

To further understand the user experience I created user stories, user flows, site maps and journey maps. This helped me focus and stay on target, It also allowed me to better map out the problem in order to find the solution. Using user-centered design helps to better visualize how a person might use and view the app.

information architecture

User Stories

I created my user stories based off of what I learned from my survey and user interviews. I tried to create as many user stories as I could think of, and then sorted them by priority by thinking back to the user pain points and goals. The highest priority user stories then helped to create the user flows.

user flows

Journey Map

The goals for this app were to alert the rider which bus line is arriving at their stop, let riders know when the next bus will arrive at their stop and how much time until the bus actually arrives at their stop. It was crucial to let the rider know how much time they have before the bus they need arrives at a specific stop.

Wireframes

After deciding how the user would use this app, I then sketched out my wireframes. When I found the best solution I created actual wireframes through Figma. Click the wireframes to see more!

Brand development

brand characteristics

RELIABLE
PRECISE
CONSISTENT

ACCESSIBLE
DEPENDABLE
TRUSTWORTHY

Mood Board

I used pace and local city transit logos as inspiration for this app. It was also necessary that the user felt that they could trust/depend on the app, which is why a blue color scheme was chosen.

logo digital sketches

Since this was the first prototype I've ever built, I decided to create my logo digital sketches in Figma so I could familiarize myself with the software. After several iterations, I chose my final logo based off of what would look best as a small icon because this was being built as an app.

TYPOGRAPHY

Since this app is being made for city transit it needed to be professional but I wanted to add a little bit of fun. I chose to use Cherry Cream Soda for the heading typography to help the app stand out and because everyone could use a little bit of fun on their commute! All typography was also chosen based off of google free fonts to ensure it would be CSS accessible.

style guide

After deciding on my final color scheme, typography and logo, I created a style guide to refer back to while I was creating my prototype.

the solution

My solution was to provide the use with an intuitive, simple design to help them catch their bus. The app was created to help the rider know when the next bus was coming to their stop and which bus line would be arriving. It also allowed the user to be able to see the entire schedule itself for any specific stop, and the bus schedule itself for a specific bus line.

Check out the
Original
low-fidelity
prototype

The user is able to see the entire schedule itself for any specific stop, and the bus schedule itself for a specific bus line.

mock up and prototype

The idea

When it was finally time to create this prototype, I wanted to make sure it was designed with accessibility and usability in mind. This led me to the decision to create a very simplistic, high contrast mockup which then led to the design of the prototype itself.

the results

By watching what the user appeared to struggle with the most, I was able to evaluate the app’s usability and accessibility, which led to several iterations of the prototype.

Problem 1:
‍Search should be providing routes and stops versus directions.
Directions were not apart of the requirements.
Solution:
‍Search results should be stops and/or routes. Add the directions feature in later iterations.
Problem 2: This is an extension of Problem 1, directions were not requested by client and are currently making the app more confusing than helpful.
Solution: Make search results more simple, and again remove the directions feature. Eventually I could give the user an extra option/feature if they need directions.

usability testing

The testers

For the user interviews and usability testing, I made sure to test multiple age ranges.

I did this because I have found the there is a correlation between interface skills and age that can impact a person’s perception of a product.

Check out
the prototype

Tasks

I gave each tester three tasks to complete:

You are currently not satisfied with the hair care you use for styling and are looking for a change. How would you approach doing this using this app?
How would you make a purchase/complete a checkout?
How would you create a profile?

testing

We needed to detect usability problems and prioritized, so the purpose of this test was the following:

Measure user success with tasks
Discover user difficulties & roadblocks in using the app
Suggest recommendations for improvement

User feedback

We learned a lot from usability testing and observing how the user interacts with the app. It was exciting to see how easy the user could navigate through each task. All testers stated they felt that the app was intuitive and clean. They enjoyed using the app and how simple everything was to get to.

Final thoughts

changes

I do believe some adjustments will need to be made to this app. I will need to iterate and complete a bit more testing to make sure that the app is designed with accessibility in mind.

By evaluating all of my user research and usability testing and basing my decisions off of user-centered design I will be able decide what the next steps should be and how much farther I have to go if this project were ever to be built into an actual app.

additions
In the future, it would be beneficial to the users if notification alerts, push alerts or other similar features would become available for the rider.  Based off of my user survey, users would also like to have a favorite option, whether for a specific stop or a specific bus line, but the feature should be available for users, especially commuters that want to check the same bus line or stop regularly. 

Creating this app confirmed my love for UX/UI Design. The idea of creating something to make someone else's life easier or better is my passion and I cannot wait to expand on this prototype.