Multi-Way
A navigation app for multi-modal transportation
APPROACH
Goal-Directed Design
DURATION
8 weeks
TOOLS
Figma, FigJam, M3 (Material Design 3)
ROLE
Team Lead, UX Designer, UX Researcher
SKILLS
Prototyping, User Interviews, Usability Testing, UI Design
The Problem Statement
The current state of the multi-modal transportation apps has focused primarily on limited transportation options (mainly driving + walking) and Point A to Point B routes instead of a user’s entire route. What existing products/services fail to address is multiple forms of transportation to get to their destination and all of their stops along the way plus a way to filter based on time or cost-effectiveness. Our product/service will address this gap by providing users with multiple forms of transportation options and a well-laid-out route based on time, cost, low carbon, or fewer transfers.
Our Approach - Goal-Directed Design
Goal-directed design (GDD) is the approach we used for this project.
GDD is a user-centered design approach that focuses on understanding and addressing the goals and needs of the users of a product or service. GDD aims to create a design that aligns with the user's goals, which can lead to a more effective and satisfying user experience.
GDD is used to better understand the user's needs and goals before we start creating a prototype. With user research, interviews, usability tests, etc., it is a process to ensure that the product we create is useful for our users.
01. Kickoff Meeting
A kickoff meeting is a meeting that marks the start of a project or initiative. It is typically held at the beginning of a project and brings together all the stakeholders involved, including the project team, sponsors, clients, and any other relevant parties.
My team was given a unique opportunity to work with Frank, our engineer and stakeholder. Our app idea stems from Frank’s capstone project during his master's degree program. He had laid the groundwork and completed the backend coding for a project: a multi-modal transportation application.
Our collaboration with Frank gave us the unique opportunity to combine both technical expertise and user experience design. With Frank's backend code as our foundation, our goal is clear: to seamlessly integrate functionality with intuitive design, revolutionizing the way users navigate urban environments.
During our kickoff meeting, we discussed our main goals and explained to Frank our approach to how we were going about designing the app. Our primary objective is to uphold Frank's original vision while enhancing it with a user-centric approach.
One of my many tasks as team leader is to send out weekly reports to keep Frank updated on the progress of the project.
02. Literature Review
A literature review is a research method used to identify and analyze existing knowledge, research, and best practices related to a specific UX design problem or topic. It involves reviewing and summarizing relevant literature from various different kinds of sources to gain a comprehensive understanding of the topic.
My team and I researched the context of our product domain by asking ourselves the question: What do we need to know better about our product domain to be more effective designers?
We tracked down, assessed, and wrote up relevant statements.
A competitive audit typically includes the following steps:
Identifying competitors
Evaluating competitors
Comparing results
03. Competitive Audit
A competitive audit is a research method used in UX design to evaluate and analyze the user experience of a product or service in comparison to its competitors. It involves reviewing and comparing the user interface, functionality, and features of similar products or services in the same market or industry. It helps by also allowing us to gain insight into what is working and not working for our competitors.
A competitive audit typically includes the following steps:
Identifying competitors
Evaluating competitors
Comparing results
04. Interviews
For our user research, we conducted a total of 5 user interviews and 2 subject matter expert interviews.
After all the interviews were completed, we compiled a list of commonalities from each person we interviewed.
Upon completing the interviews and this part of our research phase, we obtained the information needed to move on to the modeling phase.
User Interviews
We went through 5 user interviews to help us better understand our user type. The interviewees that we chose all used navigation apps and traveled for work. We compiled our notes into affinity maps and observed any patterns we saw.
Activities: Interviewees considered cost, time & safety when planning their commute
Important Factors: Convenience when it comes to planning, distance, and overall efficiency
Pain Points: Avoids traffic, especially when they are in a rush
Motivations: Simplicity & the ability to navigate thoroughly; the ability to get help when they need it
Subject Matter Interivews
During our interview process, we had the amazing opportunity to interview two subject matter experts: Todd Litman, a multi-modal consultant, and Alex Norton, an urban planner.
During our interview with Todd Litman, he told us that leading with reducing emissions to market an app like this makes it sound like an environmental strategy which is a huge mistake - focus on how it benefits people FIRST: traffic reduction, less expenses on cars & gas, more walking, more affordability, less time spent sitting in a car.
Alex Norton let us know what factors should be considered for a multi-modal transportation planning system: Thinking about WHO you’re designing the system for; “for years and years the system has been designed for single occupancy vehicles - building more lanes just put heavier demands on the road”; he said older people have different mobility needs than younger generations
05. Modeling Phase
After our user interviews, the team came together to identify our user time. We came up with one main user time: people who live near good transit systems and want/need to explore their options of multiple forms of transportation for a given commute.
We then took our information from our interviews/affinity mapping and put together a list of behavioral variables:
After creating our behavioral list, we created a behavioral variable visual continuum and circled any dominant patterns that we saw.
Dominant Patterns - Red
Subordinate Patterns - Yellow
In the modeling phase, we created Personas, which are fictional users that are created from the information we received from interviewing potential users. Personas are created to better help understand and empathize with the needs, goals, and behaviors of different types of users, and to inform the design process. They are used as a tool to make design decisions that are user-centered and focused on delivering a positive user experience.
Gathering all our information from our user research, we were able to create our primary personal: Mikael FIshman!
Personas
06. Requirements Phase
Before the team embarked into the wireframing/frameworks phase, we had to figure out what we needed in order to meet the goals of our personas. We created a problem statement and vision statement to better help us understand what kind of vision we have for our app.
Defining Product Vision
Creating Context Scenarios
Vision Statement
The new design of Multi-Way will help users achieve a well-structured and planned out route, use other forms of transportation to save money and time, and have a safe and efficient method of transportation when a personal vehicle is not available by allowing them to use multi-modal transportation routes with greater safety, cost, and time effectiveness, and without problems traffic, parking, and personal vehicle maintenance that they currently experience. This will dramatically improve Multi-Way’s customer satisfaction ratings and lead to an increased rideshare market.
Brainstorming
We then started to brainstorm ideas about certain features that our personas would find useful.
Context Scenarios
We then created a context scenario which is a narrative description of our persona's experience with our app on a day to day basis.
After all this was done, we created a list of all the expectations that our personas would have for our app. Doing this better helped us understand our mental models.
07. Frameworks Phase
We started off our frameworks phase by creating low-fidelity wireframes that were based on the features that were believed were required for our app. These wireframes help us get an understanding and basic structure of what the app will look like once it's pushed into a high-fidelity prototype.
04. Usability Testing
During our usability testing phase, we gave 4 interviewees a list of tasks and to rate each task’s difficulty on a scale of 1-10. 1 being the hardest, 10 being the easiest. Luckily, every interviewee stated that each task had a 10/10 difficulty.
There were a few things that the interviewees mentioned that we noted and made changes to.
Route Guidance needs a new color
The transportation transfer screen needs to be updated, without explanation the meaning is confusing.
Add more text to transportation transfer/ flavor-text
Maps need to be in higher resolution.
08. Refinement
Before
Before
Before
After
Our first version of our home screen displayed an optional pop-up that users could fill in how they would like to commute that day. This idea did not make it to the high-fidelity prototype phase when we realized the idea brought more risks and confusion than clarity and user-friendliness.
The team decided to have the home screen simple with a search bar and profile page and made the preferred transit commute options a bar when users had already chosen their destination.
After
During our usability testing, our interviewee mentioned that the color of the rail line blends too much into the map. We took the feedback and changed the golden color of the line into a purple color which stands out a lot more.
After
From the feedback on our usability tests, we decided to make the transportation transfer screen clearer by telling the user they have arrived at their transportation transfer destination.
Conclusion
This is the first time I’ve lead a team. I realized that I enjoy group collaboration the most when it comes to leading and being apart of a team. I like brainstorming together and talking through design processes and reasonings as a team.
As a team lead, there was a lot of planning meetings, organization, and meditation involved in the role. I enjoyed getting being able to have this experience and leading a team into creating a prototype of an app that I am proud of.