Transit Stop
Utilizing research methods to redesign a popular application to get around Chicago
ROLE
Sole UX Designer/Researcher
DURATION
3 Weeks
CATEGORY
Mobile
Some background
For the longest time, I used an app named Transit Stop to get around. I was turned on to the app by my coworker when I first arrived as a new Chicagoan and had stayed pretty loyal as a user. The catch however was that the user must know exactly where they were in the city and required them to be quite familiar with the transit routes. The home screen defaulted to the last line you had searched, not in any relation to your current location. If I were going somewhere new or unfamiliar I would first open up Google Maps to get my bearings, evaluate its recommendations and go from there. After becoming a UX Designer, I opened Transit Stop for the first time in a while and was appalled, I gasped — “How did I ever use this in the past?”
Analyze
Main issues at first glance
Home screen
The homepage loads the last stop you looked up and the map corresponds. The blue compass/crosshairs icon just centers the map back onto the stop location.
Navigating
To begin navigating, you must select from a list of tran lines or bus lines, and then select a specific stop. The user must be familiar with what each bus stop is labeled, i.e. the cross streets and which of those is is listed in the name first.
Stop selected
Train stop selected with pill collapsed. There is no way to go back to the station list on this line: the user must again select Search all over again