En Route
Sydney Public Transport App
Competitor Analysis
Five competitors were selected for analysis, each source gave a great range of heuristic to compare to. Three national services: TripView (Mobile only), Opal Planner (Mobile only) and Trip Planner and two international services: Trip Go and City Mapper.
Three competitors intend to provide their service to the same primary audience, individuals who needs information on the best and efficient route to their desired location. Tripview and Opal Travel chose to aim to the same public transport (PT) demographic however with a different goals. TripView aims to provide information to individuals who want to know the timing of their preferred mode of transport to a specific bus stop/station/wharf. Opal Travel have a different priority as they are the source of payment for PT, providing a service to manage one’s Opal cards that is connected with an account. Overall City Mapper provided the best experience as it offered more options for users to choose from, a cleaner information architecture despite the large amount of content that can presented.
The following heuristics were explored: look and feel, audience, primary and secondary content, navigation, information required from the user, information returned to the user, options of transport provided, use of tracking data (real time updates and location tracking), Opal sync, mobile performance (notifications) and rating and social presence.
To diversify against it's competitors, the MVP must have:
- Clean, simple & structured: The look and feel of the MVP has to cater to all audiences therefore a balance between fun/cool and sleek/professional is vital.
- Information needed & returned: With the recurring theme of asking for the end destination or searching for a certain route/station, the combination of both would provide the convenience to the users the options they need all through one service. With large amount of content, the information architecture must straight forward and concise yet comprehensive. The aim is for the user to immediately understand the options the MVP provides to them, minimising frustration and confusion.
- Options of transport & saving trips: The MVP has to provide ALL options to the users as it will accommodate ease and convenience.
- Use of tracking data: Real time/tracking data is the most important feature to have on the MVP. Without an accurate location tracking and precise timing, the MVP will be obsolete.
- Mobile performance: There is a major gap with the use of notifications from the competitors. To notify users, when to leave, when to get off their stop, the delays of their selected route and step-by-step guidance will all accumulate to a smoother experience for the user from when they leave their house to their end destination.
- Social media presence: Another gap that is under-utilised from the competitors, with so much happening on real time, people are always posting about current events, to be able to provide that information will smoothen the experience for the user.
User Research
Five extensive face-to-face user interviews were conducted over a week and a half period. Participants included: two University students, two work full timer and one casual freelancer, all of who, catch public transport during their day-to-day routine and use their mobiles regularly.
The interviews consisted of open-ended questions to understand each individual's routine and behaviours when catching public transport and to depict pain-points during their journeys.
In no particular order, assumptions made were the following:
- Users do their own research to find out why there are delays on the current route.
- Users use more than one application to find out where they need to go.
- Users blames their app for being late to their destination.
- Users have experienced missing their stop/station at least once in their life.
- Users would want to save as much money as possible when travelling.
- User get lost finding their way to a new location.
- Users only use TripView because it’s the most known application in Sydney.
- User would want to notified if there are any delays to main their mode of transportation.
All interviews were recorderd and trascribed. From the qualitative data gathered, I was able to map, organise and group the data into behavioural, attitudinal, goals and demographic themes to create my personas.
Initial Findings
The interviews confirmed 6 of the 8 assumptions to be true, the remaining two were disregarded from further research as they proven to be false, no one has ever found themselves lost when findng their way to a new location and no one blamed their app for being late.
- One big aspect was that everyone uses TRIPVIEW as their preferred public transport app, the candidates stated that it’s still the most reliable app in the Sydney market, two of which affirmed that they wouldn’t change apps.
- 4 of the 5 conducted their own research further on why transport would be late. Two used google, one used twitter and the other asked officials, leaving the last one who did nothing, treated it as an weekly occurance.
- All used more than one application to find out where they need to go.
- Google/Apple maps and trip planner provided the efficient route and TripView provided the schedule of the transport that needed to be taken.
- All candidates have missed their stop/station at least once in their life, two overslept, one was distracted, two have caught either the wrong train or bus.
- All candidates strongly expressed that being notified of the status of their mode of transport would be helpful in their day-to-day.
- All candidates replied in a similar manner regarding why they catch PT: less driving, more saving.
User Personas
Two personas were created from the key segments established through behavioural, attitudinal and goal themes to represent the archetypes explored:
- The Simple Traveller: has an established routine and understands their main route and it's potential misfortunes (e.g. runs late from time to time or heavy traffic along way).
- The Organised Traveller: Has a different routine due to the nature of the day (working/uni) therefore must plan and adapt accordingly just incase of any discrepencies.
User Journey Maps
The user journey maps gave me a greater understanding of each defined user and allowed me to distinguish the persona's pain points and highlight their joys in their public transport routine.
Ideation - Information Architecture
Using the insights gathered from the research and the journey maps, I was able to solidify the solutions and features my application needed. I established the information architecture and displayed the structure and hierchary visually to assist with assigning each screen with the necessary features.
User Flows
Through the information architecture - user flows were mapped out. These include:
- Setting a home address.
- Save a trip.
- Checking a traffic situation.
Wireframing
I roughly sketched pages and the potentional navigation of the application (shown on the right), whilst writing small comments as they come by.
I took the sketches and digitally reproduced them using Axure RP. With the outline of the information architecture, I made sure the each feature accomodated with the user flows.
An extremely rough sketch...
...into something more clear to read.
Main Navigation Screens
Smart Notifications Screens
Usability Testing
Collected from the four usability tests, all candidates were given 6 tasks to complete.
The overall design of the mobile app was good, clean and mostly straight forward. Most features included were favoured however some were either being disregarded and were hard to understand at first glance. A number of amendments are recommended to improve the quality of ease and experience of the app.
All tasks that were conducted were successfully completely by all users which indicates that the app is easy to use.
A number of minor technical issues were identified during the dry user test, which included, spacing, missing back buttons and a broken home button. All were fixed for the final user testings.
Results
Key recommendation identified are the following:
- Search bar should automatically set ‘current location’ as a default option for ease.
- Search bar would need to be more prominent.
- When notified of the delay in app, an option to click on ‘social feed’ would provided an easier way for user to find more information
- Change ‘Transport Route’ to ‘Transport Schedule’
- Timing options currently has depart by and leave by - it must have an arrive by option
- Scroll bar should have an A-Z functionality to quickly skip through the first letters of the station.
- Switch the direction of the slider - the green light to be on the right side to indicate that it’s on.
- Add a recently search tab on the home page/add trip page for users wanted to quickly go back to a previous search.
- Bring the notification prompt forward again when they click ‘see trip’ as some users weren’t able to read the notification clearly from their home screen.
- Add a ‘delete’ confirmation prompt before officially deleting the trip.
Minor recommendations:
- When users press ‘back’ the app should show the same prompt as if they clicked ‘find alternative route’. It inform the users of its action which will cause less confusion.
- Prompt the user to name the trip as some users were unaware of the option.
- Choosing a preferred method of transport at the start of the process
- Simplifying the clock would establish a better flow for users.
The next step...
This application is nowhere near to its potential however it's on the right direction. There's definitely a lot of room for improvement in all areas of layout, features and flow overall. The next step would be considering the recommendations from the usability testing and plan which features are a priority for the next set of testing. Ideally, establishing a more real time feedback and notification for the user to test would provide more data that improve the app considerably however it would require a lot more help and production time.
As mentioned earlier, this is one of my most proudest work to date. Overall I enjoyed the end-to-end experience and it ended up being more insight than I thought. As a regular commuter on public transport, I had my own pain-points however to be able to bring myself out of the subject and to listen and observe other people's experience, there were a lot more behaviours that I normally don't consider.
High Fidelity Mock Ups
