This project was assigned and completed in my Human and Computer Interaction course taken in the Fall of 2019 at Rutgers University - New Brunswick. We were tasked with improving the Rutgers bus system and its app as it is the recipient of many complaints the student body.

The images below feature multiple sticky notes of different observations from the members of my team. These were gathered by observing any bus stop on any route. These findings in particular are different interactions that may make the system feel slow and frustrating to students. Through our observations and shared experiences as current Rutgers students, we were able to create an idea of what pain points we may be able to remedy. 

Afterwards, we each had to complete an interview with a frequent user of the bus system. The individual I interviewed also happened to be a frequent user of public transportation outside of Rutgers thanks to his position in New York City.

With the answers garnered from my interview above, I created a user persona of the average users of the Rutgers bus system. Here, I was able to pinpoint pain points that users may face while trying to use the bus system.

After creating a user persona, my group and I met back in our class to work on the user journey. Here, we again pull from our observations, difference this time is that we've had the chance to speak with users other than ourselves. We decided to map out the events a student may face when trying to get to class on time. At points where we felt that our users may use the bus app, we quickly sketched what the UI may look like. This included a map that tracks the buses in real-time, a toggle for switching to a view showing traffic buildup, and a screen showing if the bus driver is on break or not. 

In the final step for our project, we sketched higher fidelity screens of our bus app to show the exact in-app journey that users would face when trying to track their bus or route. We chose to keep the idea of real-time bus tracking as we felt that was the most accurate way to communicate with students how close the bus is besides an ETA. For ease of use and speed, we took inspiration from Google Maps and chose to have our "Routes" menu revealed by "swiping-up" from the main live-tracking map. 

Though we never went on to prototype the app digitally, I feel that this in-class project was a great way to introduce us to and get us in the mindset of completing user research. While a lot of UX is focused on the design of an app, the gathering of information to solve a problem for users is just as if not more important than how it looks. I loved using this project as an opportunity to learn more about the interpersonal side of UX. I had a blast working out how to make something better for others, especially something that I use as often as my own university's bus system.