Meet
Introducing a tool to help keep people honest when sharing their ETAs with others, ultimately making your meet ups easier and more efficient.
How to identify, narrow down, and build a product that will address an issue that everyone can relate to - Having to meet somewhere at a designated time with a group of people and counting on their honesty and accuracy on when they will arrive.
responsive platform concept | research, design & implementation | 2 weeks
The Challenge
We were presented with the task to see how we could improve the transportation industry, what is a common occurrence and hurdle that most people face at some point in their lives.
To start, we decided to focus on public transportation, since it’s something that has a lot of exposure and usage from all types of people, it could have the most immediate impact, and it has the biggest gaps in customer satisfaction.
This led us to understand that unreliable information, lack of notifications, and delayed real time updates make it difficult to schedule and carry out smooth travel experiences with a group.
Because of this, users are not able to reach their destination in an efficient and convenient way, while keeping track of others.
So we set out to develop a responsive tool (mobile app with web view) that could communicate reliable and accurate information about a user’s (and their group’s) journey while sharing how they can reach their destination in a timely manner.
My Role
Given the tight timelines and volume of work, I took over the following roles:
Head Researcher: Kept track that the initial research was solid and cohesive since our designs would be built based on our findings.
Project Manager: Make sure we were distributing the work logically and efficiently to hit our targets and deadlines.
Before jumping into research, what do we know?
The problem in the industry…
Every industry has its pros and cons, being able to identify and acknowledge their ups and downs helps keep their target users in the forefront of any development.
When looking at the transportation industry, the good and the bad varies drastically from user to user due to the amount of variables and personal preferences.
For example, some users dislike having to rely on multiple means of transportation to get to places, so they rather take a longer route as long as it is more comfortable and convenient. And then there are users who don’t mind a more complicated route as long as they get there fast.
These initial findings and understandings helped us capture a better picture regarding how to tackle such a robust and diverse industry.
RESEARCH
Understanding what we want to focus on…
We began by putting down on paper our initial understanding of the problem space and industry.
Our hypothesis was pretty straight forward - Users of public transportation need real time updates and alternatives when navigating through their routes due to constantly changing schedules, delays, and large crowds.
This plus our overall assumptions of the pain points led us to our initial problem statement.
“How might we communicate real time updates to public transportation users to help them navigate through changing schedules, delays, and large crowds to ultimately reach their destination?”
With this problem statement, we moved forward with Screener Surveys to pin point who we should be interviewing to learn more about peoples experiences with public transportation. Through these surveys we gathered the following high level information of our audience:
Out of all our survey takers, 83% use public transportation.
It is almost an even split in the amount of times people use public transportation in a week.
40% 2-5 times a week and 40% 15+ times a week.
70% of survey takers said the train is their preferred form of public transportation.
The 2 biggest pain points of public transportation across survey takers are:
Time Constraints
Crowded
60% of our target users are in the 20-29 age group.
User Interviews
Research
After setting the baseline of where we were starting, we ran User Interviews to see if we could validate our initial understanding of the problem now solely based on what the market thinks.
Through the user interviews we wanted to learn about a few specific topics:
Their habits related to public transportation
Cars vs. Public Transportation
Popular travel apps and resources they frequent
We interviewed 6 people, which lead us to identifying the following trends:
The subcategories within “Preferences” appeared organically, every interviewee had very specific opinions.
Users have a strong emotional connection to their public transportation. They see it as a badge of honor when being able to navigate it successfully.
The preference between Speed and Comfort when traveling is very specific between users, and this decision changes depending on circumstance.
Figuring out travel logistics with a group is an added complication but it is a common occurrence.
Through the feedback and data we gathered so far, we were able to build our Persona - Taylor.
Our main takeaway was that we would need to find a way to build a platform that was easy to learn, efficient, and customizable to each users personal travel preference, while always referencing a resounding quote from a user interview who said -
“Catching the train last minute feels like a victory”
Through Taylor, we wanted to also understand how she would currently navigate a common task.
We leveraged a User Journey to better understand the emotional journey Taylor goes through when trying to meet up with a group of her photographer colleagues in the city.
This led us to narrow down the main opportunities we should keep in mind when thinking of the website navigation and flow:
The platform needs to be compatible and responsive across different devices (iPhone, Android, etc.)
Users have very specific preferences when traveling (speed vs. convince, comfort vs. crowds, transfers vs. directness, etc) so our solution needs to be customizable.
Other app functionalities should be embedded within the tool, such as the weather, travel card funds, contacts, etc.
Real time information is a key functionality that should be prioritized.
We kept Taylor at the forefront of our development, but before we moved forward, we asked ourselves - were we right? Was our initial understanding of the problem correct?
We understand that unreliable information, lack of notifications, and delayed real time updates make it difficult to schedule and carry out smooth travel experiences with a group.
Revised Problem Statement
“How might we provide Taylor with real time, reliable and accurate information about her and her group’s journey to reach their destination in a timely manner?”
DESIGN
Prioritizing Features
Before jumping into the fun design stuff, the last thing we want to do is leverage a MoSCoW map to fully lay out what features are necessary for the first release and which ones can wait. And a Feature Prioritization Matrix to realistically estimate how much effort said features will require to build and how essential they are for the experience.
This brought us to prioritize things such as:
Alternative Routes: There can be unexpected situations (accident or medical emergency), so the user can see other routes to get to destination.
Group Collaboration: Plan a destination and the time to meetup with your group members.
Group Travel, know where everyone is: Get to see how far everyone in the group is from the destination and see their ETA's.
Real time updates: Get real time updates about the arrival time of public transportation.
Location tracking: Track the location of everyone in the group to know where they really are.
First Round of Prototypes
We conducted a Design Studio as a team to begin building our Mid Fidelity (mostly gray scale, little to no copy, and no images) prototype so we can test our initial structure.
TESTING
We conducted our first round of User Tests on our Mid Fidelity prototype. The test consisted of the following tasks:
Sign in and find the “Photographers” group
Find direction to the Flatiron building and begin trip
Locate Sam on the map and get more info on his journey
Check your status and ETA and see if there is a faster way to get to the destination
Find all group members status and ETA
And the initial results were promising:
There were no task failures
The average time on task was 10 seconds.
The average success rate was 74%
The average easiness rating was 4.4 (out of a possible 5 stars)
Along with the above quantitative data, we mainly gathered qualitative information based on the testers observed behaviors, comments and friction points, we broke these down into Pain Points and Action to fix them.
PAIN POINTS
Users found it useful to be able to see all group member’s status at once, however, they usually gravitated to simply clicking on the individual.
Users had a hard time understanding that the “Photographers” Group section at the top and the “Alternate Routes” section at the bottom were buttons that had actions attached to them.
When exiting out of a specific users profile on the map, users by nature would first click anywhere else on the screen to go back to the map. It was only on the second or third try most users clicked on the profile again to make it disappear.
“Notify Running Late” button proved to be distracting and confusing for most interviewees. They believe that functionality should be located in a different area of the interface.
ACTIONS
Include more information on the individual profiles so the user also has the option to click there to get their status.
Update the tabs to be more similar to a button rather than a swipe up/down functionality, this will help the users get the most functionality out of the tool.
Implement the change that matches the behavior of most interviewees, which is to make the entire screen responsive to the action.
Combine information relating to the user into one area (My ETA, what train/bus they’re on, Running Late button, etc)
Building a Responsive Platform
Given the nature of where and how a public transportation tool would be used, we knew we had to build for both a mobile interface for on the go usage and a web view for more elaborate trip planning
Below is a breakdown of how both interfaces were built and how they performed against usability tests
“MEET” APP
With the Meet APP, users will be able to receive real time updates on public transportations, and make sure you know where your late group members really are.
Once we applied the changes based on feedback to the mobile applications, we did one more round of testing.
We tested the High Fidelity mobile view prototype (full branding colors, all copy and text applied, and including images) with the same 5 tasks from the original tests:
Sign in and find the “Photographers” group
Find direction to the Flatiron building and begin trip
Locate Sam on the map and get more info on his journey
Check your status and ETA and see if there is a faster way to get to the destination
Find all group members status and ETA
And the results were looking up after evaluating the issues:
Compared to test one, average time on task increased by 5 seconds (from 10 to 15 seconds)
However, even thought it took people longer to complete the tasks, the average success rate increased from 74% to 90%
The average easiness rating also increased from 4.4 to 4.7 (out of a possible 5 stars)
“MEET” WEB
By using Meet on web, users will be able to more thoroughly plan their trips along with larger groups.
Just like the Mid Fidelity app testing, along with the above quantitative data, we also gathered qualitative information of the High Fidelity web testing based on the testers observed behaviors, comments and friction points, we broke these down into Pain Points and Action to fix them.
PAIN POINTS
Some users mentioned the need to make the text a bit bigger/bolder so its easier to read.
There was still significant friction in Task 5 (finding group info) due to the tab not looking like a clickable button.
Users usually navigated to the individual group member icons on the map to get more info.
ACTIONS
Increase the sizing of the existing text to a more widely visible format.
Based on the feedback of users on how to make this better, change the color of the button to match the color of the “My Trips” button to keep with the consistency and make it more obvious.
Add a link or a button to the individual group member sections that indicate
they can see all their team members info at the top of the screen.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Not only does the quantitative data back up our motivations, but also the qualitative feedback that has been received (and summarized under “Insights” in each section) allows us to keep us honest when focusing on the best tools to build. With the above being said, we can confidently recommend the continued research and development of this offering.
Usability Testing
Conduct 2 rounds of usability testing on the desktop view of the tool to be able to accommodate different users needs and implement overall feedback.
Conduct 1 more round of usability testing on the mobile view of the tool to make sure that the final pieces of feedback were taken into consideration and applied.
Reprioritize Features
Once the initial version of the tool is live, refer back to the MOSCOW Map and Feature Prioritization Matrix to plan out next feature additions that will complement the current offering.
Every industry has its pros and cons, being able to identify and acknowledge these ups and downs helps keep the target user in the forefront of any development.
In the case of the public transportation industry, the good and the bad varies drastically from user to user. This research emphasizes, and celebrates those differences to better accommodate peoples needs.