Researching and Designing Smart City App for Public Transit

Project Lead for Audio Movement

Brief

For a transportation hackathon in San Diego, I lead an team of 2 developers and a visual designer through the design process to investigate solutions for improving commuter experiences. We created a raspberry-pi system that featured an educational app with the goal of increasing internet accessibility and enhancing well-being for bus riders.

What I did

Conducted contextual inquiry of problem space

Made surveys and interview questions

Recruited interviewees and tested on users

Brainstormed and reiterated on UI using gathered research

Created storyboards to explain product idea and use cases

Used Axure and Illustrator to create high fidelity prototype

Assisted in creating UI interactions video

Wrote script for promotional video

Presented design at Design Forward Summit 2017, receiving 4th place out of 20 teams

Solution

Research

Challenge

My goal was to encourage bus ridership by enhancing the commuter experience. I worked with 2 computer engineers and a visual designer, and we had a lot of fun going through the field research process: observing riders on the bus, handing out surveys, and interviewing.

Surveys and Interviews

I created surveys and interview questions as well as a protocol for the team to follow. Together we gathered over 20 sets of data from bus riders, supermarket shoppers, and students. We also received feedback from the bus service and city data employees on how our product would meet their needs.

Personas and Storyboarding

Using the field work we conducted on the bus, I diagrammed several storyboards of bus riders to visualize how impactful a multimedia learning app could be, outlining to the judges the passion driving our project.

Insights and Solution

Based on our human-centered research process, the solution is a wi-fi enabled raspberry pi that allows users to receive podcasts for their commute time and audiobooks to continue listening to on their daily commutes. We wanted to give underserved areas access to educational materials since some of the bus riders we interviewed had never heard to "TED" or audiobooks before. To entice city funding, the application would also gather data for marketing and feedback via customer surveys.

Design

Prototype #1 and User Testing

While my team members set up the backend, I worked on a lo-fi mock-up using Axure. We tested it on the bus with users, using different routes to ensure no groups were marginalized.

Revisions and Prototype #2

After the feedback, we incorporated features like community surveys, news and events, and bus routes. I wireframed the UI and handed it off to the graphics designer, whose screens I turned into a clickable prototype.

Results

Presentation at 2017 Design Forward Conference

I presented the prototype, video and poster at the 2017 Design Forward Conference in San Diego, and pitched the idea to civic and industry leaders such as the mayor and Don Norman. We placed fourth out of twenty teams, received honorary mention, and I was interviewed for the San Diego tribune. San Diego Metropolitan Transit Services were interested in implementing the app and raspberry pi on their busses, but lack of city funding caused the project to hault.