challenge
Waiting for San Diego’s public buses to come during evenings is a distressful experience. The reason is because the number of buses greatly diminish. Some routes only have one bus in service per hour. So, there is no way to know if a bus has already passed by or not. Passengers still have to wait for the next one available. In some occasions, passengers have to wait under the rain just to make sure they don’t miss it.
role
Research, design and prototype ideas to improve boarding experience for the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System.
tools
Balsamiq, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Marvel
timeframe
Jan 2016 - March 2016
RESEARCH
I conducted an interview with one my friends who takes the public bus to school regularly. Based on the interview I learned more about her riding needs, wants and behavior pattern. Here is one of the quotes from her. Later on I sketched some scenarios of ways to improve the riding experience.
“Public transportation is great but it can get a bit unpredictable with trolley and buses schedules. There is always the wait time. If you are in hurry with a tight schedule, public transportation can get tricky. ”
Scenario 1- Tracking and Setting Alarm (left). Scenario 2- Improving boarding time. (right)
WIREFRAMES
I used Balsamiq for quick low fidelity wireframes to explore the searching and checking in functionalities. After couple iterations, I used Illustrator to produce high fidelity mockups to examine how to incorporate branding and real life data.
PROTOTYPE
Bus Me is a mobile app that helps users set alarms so they know the bus is close to their preferred bus stop. First, I created all the assets using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and then I exported and linked them using Marvel App.