Discovery Stage
Where did we start? / Broad area we focused on in our empathy stage?:
How can we improve unwanted, stressful experiences commuting?, Help with time management for students
What product/service/target audience:
Improving commuting, University Students who live on and off campus
Empathize Stage
Secondary Research
Nelson, D., Misra, K., Sype, G. E., & Mackie, W. (2016). An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Distance From Campus And Gpa Of Commuter Students. Journal of International Education Research, 12(1), 37–46. https://doi.org/10.19030/jier.v12i1.9565
This article unfolds the important aspects of the differences between the skills and qualities of Residential and Commuter Students, the collected data towards this information and results such as the student's GPAs. This research article allows us to take a further look at the realistic comparison of commuters and residential students through the studies.
Coutts, S., Aird, B., Mitra, R., Siemiatycki, M., 2018. Does commute influence post- secondary Students’ social capital? A study of campus participation at four universities in Toronto, Canada. J. Transp. Geogr. 70, 172–181.
This study aimed to find if there is a correlation between a student's commute and sociability when at school. Despite the growing availability of clubs, groups and teams on campus, students reportedly felt discouraged from joining these activities due to their commute. The commute time of an individual was heavily linked with their participation in extracurriculars. This relationship was seen the most among transit riders.
Chatterjee, K., Chng, S., Clark, B., Davis, A., De Vos, J., Ettema, D., Handy, S., Martin, A., & Reardon, L. (2020). Commuting and wellbeing: A critical overview of the literature with implications for policy and future research. Transport Reviews, 40(1), 5–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/01441647.2019.1649317
This study aims to examine the relationship between commuting and well-being. During the journey, immediately after the journey, and over the long term. Their study found that a person's mood is negatively affected when on a commute and that their mood affects them when they reach school, work, or home. The study points to congestion, unpredictability, and crowding as factors that worsen the mood of a commuter.
Zhou, L., Wang, M., Chang, C., Liu, S., Zhan, Y., & Shi, J. (2017). Commuting stress process and self‐regulation at work: Moderating roles of daily task significance, family interference with work, and commuting means efficacy. Personnel Psychology, 70(4), 891–922. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12219
This scholarly article looks at how commuting may be connected to the well-being of humans. Multiple factors such as overcrowding, buses arriving late, and people stalling the bus by asking the driver questions are all factors that have been shown by people who induce stress by commuting. The study has also researched and shown a relation that if an individual is stressed from their morning commute, that stress will likely carry on for the rest of that user’s day.
Bailey, J., & Cohen, A. (2021, May 20). That “Dreaded” Commute Is Actually Good for Your Health. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2021/05/that-dreaded-commute-is-actually-good-for-your-health
The article discusses the benefits of commuting, particularly in terms of physical and mental health. Commuting can be beneficial in terms of physical activity, as it can increase the amount of time spent walking or cycling. In terms of mental health, commuting can provide a period of transition between work and home life, which can allow for a greater sense of work-life balance. The article also notes that commuting can be a social activity, as it can provide opportunities for conversation and connection with others.
Diary Studies
“Commuting to school is really hard especially if you have to use public transportation. It is very time-consuming.”
“Traffic cannot be controlled by the bus driver. It also frustrates us when there’s awful traffic.”
“I am always late to classes because of my bus that either won’t come or gets delayed. It never informs me through my transit app.”
“Waking up and making sure you catch your bus is stressful. If you’re even one or two minutes late, the bus will already be gone and if you didn’t plan to get to your destination early, you’re going to be late to wherever you were heading.”
“I commute to school by myself. Having no one to talk to for the whole trip can leave me like I'm isolated from everyone else. It also leaves me bored for most of the trip. I have to worry about where I look as well. If I look for another person for even a second and they are looking at me, I just find it really awkward so there really is no place to look except down towards the floor, at your phone, or closing your eyes.”
Empathy Mapping
Fly on the Wall, AEIOU
Actions:
• Showing UPass
• Tapping Presto
• Inserting bus ticket
• Inserting money to purchase a ticket
• Using a mobile/technological (laptop) device
• Reading a book
• Listening to music
Environment:
• Front entrance
• Back entrance
• Bus driver area
• Side seats
• Rows of seats in two
Interactions:
• To Bus Driver
• “Good morning/afternoon/evening”
• “Thank you”
• “Does this bus go to __?”
• “How much is the fare?”
• “How can I get to __?”
• “Where is __?”
• “How many stops until __?”
• To Friends
• “When are we getting off?”
• “How was school?”
• “What classes do you have today”
• “Did you finish the assignment/test?”
• “Did you study for the assignment/test?”
Objects:
• Seats
• Advertisements
• Handicap Sign
• Stop Button
• Stop String
• Windows
• Bus Handles
• Presto Machine
• Bus Ticket Machine
Users:
• Bus Driver
• Local University Students (or live far)
• Local High School Students (or live far)
• Local Elementary/Middle School Students (or live far)
• Children
• Parents
• Elders
• Workers
• Adults without Vehicles
• Families
• Bus Driver Trainer/Instructor
Define Stage
Affinity Diagramming
How Might We Statement
• Improve the commuting experience for university students?
• Improve overcrowding situations?
• Reduce stress caused by commuting for university students?
• Improve networking to help with the commuting experience?
Ideate Stage
Crazy 8's
Throughout the ideation stage, we used different methods to develop and come up with ideas that would solve our “how might we?” statement.
As shown through our methods in the Empathy stage we came up with many ideas whether they be technological advancements like apps and tracking systems or structural changes to already existing infrastructure such as bus stops and busses themselves. Out of all the ideas the most feasible and impactful ones were creating an app or improving the options that buy soffer. Our wants and goals surrounding these two ideas were the following:
App:
• Would have the most up-to-date arrival times.
• Notify riders of any updates.
• Provide info or route and facts about the bus such as seat and wifi availability.
• Have a carpooling system to connect riders.
• Make it much easier to pay for transit by having a bus card on the app and allow users to add money directly from there.
Buses:
• Create double-decker or longer buses that allow much more people to ride at once.
• Have free wifi on board to allow riders to use transit time in a productive manner.
• Creating privacy cabins where riders can be undisturbed.
• Having express buses running only to and from high-volume stops such as a university.
Both these ideas were chosen on the merit of desirability and feasibility but most importantly their impactfulness made them stand out from the other ideas. From a desirability standpoint, these two ideas had the potential to fix many of the problems that we saw commuters face within the empathy stage of our project. These problems include but are not limited to wait time, loss of time during travel, not being able to sit, and busses being full or breaking down. Therefore, we chose to expand upon the app and busses to come up with changes we can make to actually tackle the issues we identified. Furthermore, the aspect of feasibility leads us to choose these two ideas. Firstly, creating an app would be much more financially affordable and less time-consuming especially compared to a lot of the infrastructure ideas that we had.
However, we did realize the desirability and impactfulness of infrastructure change and chose to also consider changes to buses. We found that some of these changes such as free wifi and longer buses were already being implemented around the globe and even in parts of Canada and therefore would certainly be feasible.
As far as choosing the ideas to prototype, feasibility played an utmost factor in our decision. Therefore creating an app seemed like the best option as we could create something interactable and desirable.
We then focused on methods to prototype our ideas. Storyboarding was a design method we used to visualize scenarios for our app. Within this process, we also identified many ideas that we could incorporate within the app. To bring our app to life we used rapid prototyping software called Figma to create an interactable wireframe. The wireframe would show different features of our app and the functionality of it.
Prototype Stage
We then focused on efforts on developing our app. We started by creating a very simplistic styleguide to help us start building the app:
We then created a high-fidelity and interactable prototype for our app:
User Testing Stage
Firstly, our user introduction questions were focused on learning about our testers and past experiences with public transit.
For Example:
“Do you live on or off campus?
“Do you take public transit?”
“Have you encountered any problems with the transit?”
Based on our results, the majority of testers (four out of five) use public transit to commute to school and other locations (such as grocery stores, restaurants, etc.) regardless if they live on or off campus. The outlier tester who refuses to utilize public transportation, uses Uber due to his dislike of checking bus schedules and waiting times. There were a variety of problems that users encountered on public transit. For instance, the late arrival of buses and the change of routes without prior notification were common problems voiced by users. Additionally, lack of seat spaces, early departures, Wi-fi availability, and safety issues were among the other highlighted problems users reported.
Next, we observed the steps of users when completing the tasks on the application. Through our observations, we noticed that users were able to easily complete the simpler tasks and navigate the designated sections. For example, testers were able to access the home, edit, alert, and Presto features without errors or unnecessary steps. However, users struggled to locate our complex and creative features (Example: How do you find the wifi availability, noise level, and seating availability of your bus?). Users tend to take a longer amount of time to navigate these features. Moreover, testers tend to have trouble with locating the timeline section as users would navigate the bus alerts section (when given the search for the timeline task).
Thirdly, after the testing stage, we asked users for feedback to improve the reliability, accessibility, and layout of our application.
For Example:
“What features were the easiest and difficult to access?”
“What features stood out the most? Why?”
We received excellent feedback on the design of the layout and users positively commented on the usefulness of the features. For instance, one of the testers stressed the importance of the bus alerts feature as transit organizations do not distribute real-time notifications of schedule changes and arrivals. Moreover, users reported the application itself is user-friendly. However, the majority of users pointed out the confusion between the timeline and bus alerts sections as the titles can be misinterpreted. Testers recommended changing the title of the timeline just to “carpool section” to make it easier to access and differentiate from the bus alerts section. Additionally, testers recommended changing the signifiers to icons that better represent the function of the feature. Testers suggested allowing users to develop a mapping tool that allows the user to navigate through a digital real-world map. Lastly, one of our users recommended restructuring the "add balance" feature to the Presto function and separating it from the Apple Pay feature.
As a group, our first major implementation is to change the timeline’s section title to “carpool” to reduce misinterpretations of the timeline and bus alert features. Next, we plan to develop a mapping tool which allows users to navigate through locations on a real-world map. For the profile icon, we plan to add a circle with a person or any choice of background by the user to improve the representation of that feature. Furthermore, we will change the signifier of the home button to a home icon as it simply and properly represents its function. We plan to create a signifier for the ticket feature and implement a ticket icon on the bottom of the home page. Finally, we will add a “arrive by” and depart by” feature to allow users to schedule their trips ahead of time.
Conclusion
As the project lead for UI/UX development and design, I had the privilege to learn so much about the design thinking process and work within a team to accomplish and tackle just a big task. This journey involved understanding user challenges, ideating innovative solutions, and developing an interactive prototype. The resulting "Smart Commuting" app exemplifies user-centric design principles, providing a streamlined and efficient commuting experience for university students. The iterative testing and refinement process, guided by user feedback, ensured the app's usability and effectiveness.