Duration
August 2020 (1 month)

Role
User Research and UX Design Co-Lead

Team
Kevin Chu

Tools
Figma
Adobe Photoshop

Defining the Problem

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a rapid transit system that provides affordable and accessible public transportation to a vast majority of the denizens residing in San Francisco/Bay Area in California. As COVID-19 continuously alters our perception of public facilities and services, we wanted to envision a product that rebuilds the trust between the community and public transportation.

With this objective in mind, we formulated the following problem statement to guide our design processes:

Core Experiences
With a commuter-first mentality, we centralized our efforts on reimagining BART’s mobile presence. Complementing BART’s mission to connect communities with seamless mobility, our mobile application provides commuters with detailed trip navigation, contactless forms of payment, and a community-based notification system. Our vision of the BART mobile application aims to make commuting effortless for everyone, everywhere.

Trip Planner & Navigation
View upcoming BART times and plan your trip accordingly. The detailed trip view provides transparency and information through all stages of your route, from start to end.

Contactless Payment: Clipper Card
With hygiene in mind, we developed a new form of contactless payment utilizing E-tickets and digital Clipper Cards.

Pair your physical Clipper card to your digital wallet and say hello to a reimagined, hygiene-oriented BART experience.

Reload Whenever
With consumer convenience in mind, we have introduced a new reload feature that allows users to reload their Clipper cards directly through the mobile app.

Contactless Payment: E-Ticket
Consumers without Clipper Cards can still embrace a contactless BART experience through the introduction of E-Tickets.

Avoid direct contact with kiosks and purchase one-way or roundtrip tickets directly from the app.

Alerts: For Commuters, By Commuters
BART’s mission is to connect Bay Area communities with seamless mobility and our mission is to connect communities with one another.

We wanted to establish a sense of community within BART commuters to promote connectivity, safety, and awareness. Always stay up to date with official BART posts as well!

Update Your Community
Providing users with the power to inform and connect with their community.

Research

In our research, we conducted 10 user interviews, gathered 30 user responses from surveys, and analyzed existing public transportation products as a form of competitive analysis.

To synthesize our research, we utilized affinity mapping to help us visualize the data gathered and deduced 3 key insights:

  User Personas

  We then consilidated the insights into two main personas, with the primary persona being the most common user type out of the ones we interviewed.

  Journey Mapping

To empathize with our primary persona’s overall BART experience, we utilized journey mapping to help us better understand and visualize his pain points throughout his regular commute.

Ideation & Low-Fidelity Prototypes

With ideas brewing, we ideated individually and then collaboratively decided on the potential features that we wanted to explore. We proceeded to sketch out low-fidelity prototypes of the core screens. During this stage, we focused primarily on screen composition and element placement.

Mid-Fidelity Prototypes

After finalizing our wireframes, we transitioned to mid-fidelity prototypes and began fleshing out aesthetic elements. We designed multiple iterations with flow in mind, hoping to gather valuable feedback during user testing about how each screen interacted with one another.

Feedback/User Testing

Using our mid-fidelity prototypes, we conducted 6 user tests on both frequent and inexperienced bart users.

High-Fidelity User Flow

Reflection & Key Takeaways

Working on this project was definitely rewarding and insightful. I felt eager to iterate on my designs because I thought about how it can alleviate the stress people experience when riding the BART–especially during this pandemic. Throughout the iteration process, we aimed to make the flow as smooth and efficient as possible.

One key takeaway from this project is that constructive feedback is important. When working with Kevin, we gave each other valuable feedback on how we can improve as designers and as a team player. Providing feedback helped us reflect upon what we should continue doing and what we need to improve on to work more effectively and efficiently.

In the next step of our process, I would want to user test our final prototype with both new and current BART users in different age groups to gain valuable insights from a wide range of people.