Walk to Oakland BART Station
500 feet
10:21 - 10:25
am
2 riders at destination
Group leaves at 10:25 am
Message Group
10:25
am
Meet up group
At Oakland BART Station
Transit group meet-up
Confirm arrival
The group is all here!
Everyone in the transit-pool group is here and ready to go
Case Study
Reimagining transportation in a safe and efficient manner
Background
Bay Area Rapid Transit, or “BART” is the primary public transportation system serving the Bay Area, interconnecting 5 of the Bay Area counties.
Roles
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Timeline
5 Weeks
Context
According to an article by ABC7 News in 2023, BART ridership numbers have taken a steep decline since the pandemic, as riders were hesitant to board BART trains due to fear.
"Before 2020, BART was averaging around 400,000 riders a weekday. Now, they are only averaging between 100,000 and 150,000 per weekday."
-https://abc7news.com/bart-ridership-safety-crime-bay-area-rapid-transit/13228110/
The current public opinion of BART is effecting the ridership numbers, as BART is experiencing the lowest ridership numbers in history.
Framing the problem
How do we make the BART less intimidating to take?
Based on my personal experience taking public transportation, pain points users experience while taking public transportation generally fall under three categories:
Navigation Issues
Trips with the BART often involve navigating through dense and crowded stations, boarding multiple trains with confusing naming schemes, and walking around unfamiliar areas.
Time anxiety
People worry about not getting to their destination in a timely manner.
Safety Concerns
Recent news about attacks on the BART keep people on edge.
Addressing these pain points, I devised a solution to all of these matters.
Solution
A BART app that provides users with tools that inform them about timely-matters and safety-issues while clearly navigating them through the BART.
Market Research
trip planner
payment for tickets
alerts
vehicle capacity
live route guidance
station information
maps
other modes of transport
arrival/departure times
live map of near vehicles
crowdsourced information
What are the other solutions to our problems within the market?
I wanted to explore the technologies within the transportation industry relevant to my design. I narrowed down the app selection to include direct competitors targeting the same user base as BART, such as MTA, Muni, Amtrak, and indirect competitors like Uber. After conducting a competitive analysis, I found that most apps prioritized navigation features to inform users about their journeys. However, there was a noticeable gap in the market regarding safety reporting features within these apps. My research will now focus on developing features that address these gaps in the market.
User Research
With an understanding of the scope of the market and a general BART statement in mind, I chose to conduct user interviews and surveys on a variety of Bay Area locals to understand what specific pain points they experience during their commute. I asked 5 interview questions to a total of 5 participants, and surveyed 40 users to confirm our initial hypothesized pain points as well as discover new ones.
I interviewed a diverse range of individuals from the Bay Area, varying in age, occupation, and BART commute frequency in order to gain comprehensive feedback, including non-BART users. Users were primarily college-students within the bay.
What troubles do you experience while taking the BART?
“The BART stations were just too out of the way to my destination and it can be a struggle to navigate from those stations as I tend to get lost.”
“Taking public transportation makes me feel unsafe and I get paranoid because of the recent news about attacks happening within the city.”
“Once I was late to work commuting using BART because of the bus times were inaccurate and the app I used did not clearly label where I had to get off.”
Navigation
Safety
Time
66% of Bay Area residents who have never taken the BART before have done so out of safety concerns, while 80% of BART users state they have experienced safety concerns while on their commute.
100% of users of the BART use their phone while commuting,
69% of users use their phone as a navigation tool.
User Pain Points
I defined each pain point gathered from the user research into three umbrella categories of navigation, safety, and time-sensitivity in order to gain an understanding of the problems users experience during their commute.
I wanted to develop a better sense of who we are designing for, so I created an empathy map in order to understand the user’s journey.
Empathy Map
Visualizing an empathy map allows us to understand real, practical problems the users face while on their commute.
How do I report this crime?
Thinks?
Feels?
Paying for Uber is too expensive
Uncertain how to get to their destination.
Says?
“I want to get to work as soon as possible.”
“My bus is running late.”
“It is crowded in this bus.”
“I don’t know where to go in this station.”
“Ubers are getting expensive.”
Does?
Uses Google maps
Rides Ubers to get to places.
Leaves home early to get to their destination on time
Gets off the wrong stops.
Does not take the BART.
Where is my bus?
What time will I get to my destination?
Where do I go after I get off the BART?
Where can I find safety reports?
Feels unsafe on the BART.
Wants to get to their destination on time.
BART is too inconvenient to take.
Doesn’t have time to purchase tickets at the stations.
Ideation
How should we focus our design efforts?
A trip planner that provides users with the fastest routes and informs them of any obstacles along the route.
Clear Guidance
Provide a seamless train experience through phone payments for tickets and informing users about delays and mishaps.
Time Management
Keeping users up-to-date on the latest issues to the commute with user-submitted reports. Allow to user to create or join a transit-pooling group.
Safety
Prioritizing these pain points while creating the app will result in an enhanced user experience while taking public transportation.
User Flow
User wants to navigate to a destination
The user’s experience of the app should be tailored towards the user pain points while taking the BART. The home screen directs users to start the trip plan, see nearby times for trains, and a general overview of the map. Users can immediately report suspicious behavior with a report button on the bottom of the screen from the home screen, and view official/user submitted reports with the navigation bar.
Wireframing
My initial prototypes focused on solutions that answered the user’s needs. My focus on the home screen was on how to efficiently convey needed information to users without having them to dig through to find it. I wanted to show users the time-related information first, like a readily apparent time table for trains at a specific station. The navigation bar includes an enlarged report button to ensure that users will immediately know where to go when reporting something to the BART app.
Usability Testings
I gathered user feedback using A/B testings in order to see what user preferences were while navigating through the BART. I conducted three rounds of testings to see what users prefer for these low-fidelity prototypes, gauging how user’s would prefer to see information.
User preferred a home screen that included an overview of the maps to gauge where the user is relative to nearby stations and trains. These user tests results allow us to define a user story that will help us translate our wireframes into high-fidelity designs.
Finalized Designs
I finalized these designs based off of the wireframes and focused on following pre-existing style guides on established transit applications.
Designing a transit app that is safe and efficient
Find your destination
Get an overview of the map, navigation options, and view when nearby BART trains leave.
Plan your trips
Station alerts will be displayed station icons and users will have an option to navigate with a transit group.
Staying safe
Transit Groups
Transit groups allow you to join other BART app users in a group setting to socialize and feel safer in numbers
Test Cases
In order to identify issues with the user flow, we tested real world scenarios in where users are instructed to navigate to a given destination. We defined scenarios when the user are able to successfully navigate to their destination as a happy path.
Happy Paths
We defined scenarios when the user are able to successfully navigate to their destination as a happy path. Users can opt to either go alone or with a transit-pool group, which would allow for different users going to the same destination to meet up and take the BART together.
Cases where the user input deviates from completing the task are defined as unhappy paths. Unhappy paths that occurred during testing were:
Users who know the general vicinity of their destination, but do not know the specific address.
User has multiple destinations while on their commute and needs to make multiple stops mid-navigation
Unhappy Paths
Cases where unexpected errors causes the user to be unable to navigate are defined as edge cases. Edge cases that occurred during testing were:
User loses connection while taking the BART and cannot view navigation
User has multiple destinations while on their commute and needs to make multiple stops mid-navigation
Edge Cases
Reflections
Throughout working on this case study, I realize the design process is not linear, but an iterative cycle. I learned how flexible the design work process must be and how assumptions are not always correct. For example, I underestimated the need users would have for navigation, and thought people would prioritize time-tables. Reflecting on this feedback discovery has taught me to be flexible throughout my work process, as assumptions are not always correct.