True Ride is a project I worked on while studying UX Design at General Assembly. I created this on my own, covering the research, MVP and design.
It started with my own frustration with the inability to know when my bus would be arriving. Too many times have I had to sprint only to still miss the bus. I was fed up and decided to start asking other transit riders how they felt about it too. Turns out my frustrations were shared and so True Ride was born!
TARGET AUDIENCE
Public transit riders
Ages 25-50
Work or live in a metropolitan area
User interviews and competitive research
I gathered some data from in-person interviews with bus riders as well as surveyed 15 different acquaintances from my network. This user research helped to determine competitors in the space and to build out a feature matrix
100% of interviewed riders use One Bus Away or Google maps or both.
100% of interviewed riders are frustrated that existing transit apps promise accurate bus times but do not deliver.
70% of riders use the bus 5 times a week, to and from work.
Prioritizing Features, initial flows and wireframes
With a solid set of data, I put together a list of MVP features I felt would best address the problems and categorized each feature into a matrix of: Nice to have / Esssential and High effort / Low effort. This set of features were the building blocks for initial app flow and wireframes.
My number one goal was to provide accurate bus locations to users within 15 seconds of opening the app. Every feature in the app supports that goal.
More testing and lo-fi prototyping
I took my initial designs and ran some tests with potential users. Overall, users seemed to understand what the app was meant to accomplish. After mulling it over, I chose to remove the notification screen as it felt non-MVP given that users were able to quickly see their bus on the map itself. I also felt it was at risk for not being completely accurate which is the main goal of the app.
Final prototype
One more round of tests helped reveal that users weren’t initially understanding the icons on the map, so I added a quick on-boarding screen that labels the icons for new users and disappears when they click anywhere. They also were getting stuck on features that I hadn’t hooked up, so I added some lightweight flows to wrap things up. You can see the final prototype by clicking on the button below!