Task
To increase ridership on the CTA through digital means.
CTA Redesign: A study on Increasing Ridership and User Comfort
Roles | Team of 3
Researcher & Lead UI Designer
Responsibilities
User Research | Information Architecture | Design Strategy | Visual Design & Prototyping
Introduction
- CTA recognizes that if they increase the ridership, everyone wins — residents, visitors, businesses, and the city itself.
- With a better overall system, they’ll receive bigger budget to make even further improvements, perform more frequent maintenance, and keep their workers happy.
- However, ridership is not close to where it could be.
- While the problem is large and multi-faceted, CTA believes that improving their digital offering via their website or digital apps could lead to quick-win improvements.
Discovery & Research
My team and I conducted a few types of research methods to get down to the bottom of users’ problems with their experience using the CTA, and why they aren’t riding more.
Google Survey
We began by creating and sending out a google survey focusing on the physical aspect of riding the CTA, and the digital experience users have when navigating the transit system with mobile applications. We discovered a lack of awareness of the official transit app, and concerns about safety and timing.
We asked what people didn’t enjoy about the CTA in an open ended question, these were some responses:
“It’s crowded and overwhelming sometimes. […] and is dangerous at night (esp for ladies)”
“[…] if the tracker is off and leads me to miss the bus because the arrival time changed dramatically.”
“delays/gross men”
Contextual Inquiries
The team took to the streets to talk to and observe real CTA users. We asked them how they felt about the CTA, and we observed users interact with Ventra Kiosks and transit apps in real time.
In particular, we got amazing feed back from a CTA employee, and one interviewee who came back to tell me one of his very real concerns: the current inability to report problems in real time.
We also witnessed one user have no idea how to find the platform she was supposed to go to, saying:
“The sign doesn’t say what my phone says! Which stairs do I take?”
Synthesis
After gathering all our research and analyzing all our data, we noticed a few things:
- People don’t mind waiting as long as they know what time the bus/train is arriving
- They want reliability
- They need clear directions
- Universal concern for safety
- Users need a way to feel safe and need to be able to properly/accurately plan around public transit time
After an ideation session with our peers, we came up with a few solutions to fulfill the users needs for safety, timing, and awareness:
- Ladies Car — a car near the front/conductor designated for women and others who feel threatened
- Extended train service- additional routes that run later in the evening so users aren’t stuck after a certain hour
- Increase Police Patrol (especially evenings)
- Live User feeds- integrate live user feeds, from twitter, that let other users know in real time what is happening on the train or bus they are about to get one (such as delays or hazards)
- Emergency Button — a button in the app that users can hit to contact authorities and immediately and automatically submit photos, videos, and location information for use in investigations.
- Step by step directions with photos — to aid users in knowing exactly where to reach their transit
But the physical solutions were out of our scope, leaving us with 3 solutions that fulfilled the business needs.
• Live User feeds
• Emergency Button
• Step by step directions with photos
Design Direction
Our analysis led us to 3 problems to solve for, and our ideation gave us the design direction to do so.
Control of Time
- Real-Time updates & notifications (delays, reminders, next arrival)
- Live Feeds from social media integrated into app (“Waze for transit”)
- Step-by-step instructions with photos
Safety
- Emergency Action function (emergency & non-emergency)
- Explain on-boarding steps
Awareness
- Social Media Live Feeds
- Interactivity
- Bidirectional Communication
We also decided, based on business needs, to treat these solutions as new features in the existing Ventra app. It already allows for refilling your transit cards and accuracy in train schedules, it merely needed enhancements.
Sketching and Prototyping
We began putting thoughts to paper and visualizing what these enhancements would look like.
We took these initial sketches and turned them into low-fidelity wireframes in the Sketch App, and then created a prototype in Invision.
We then user tested and found:
- Keeping the existing ventra menu/home and adding our featurs to the transit tracker page was too cluttered and confusing
- People were scared to touch the emergency button because they didn’t know what it did/they thought it was real.
- The Transit Map was laid out in a confusing manner, and we needed better iconography.
We incorporated this feedback into a second iteration and prototype, which included:
- An onboarding process to adjust users to our new features
- Recreated a landing page that also serves as a cleared menu,
- and separating our new features from the transit tracker and into their own sections
- Simplified address inputs, and use cleared iconography and text cues
- Created a different emergency icon
The second user testing went far better, with users saying things such as:
“…every phone should have this [emergency call feature]”
“I never realized i needed a detailed view until now, and I’m going to be really sad when I go back to using the real app later”
“This live feeds is great, would have really helped with that red line thing just the other day”
We did receive feedback about not requiring users to input name and contact info when reporting a problem (since they are already logged in).
With this in mind, we adjusted our prototype, which you can interact with below:
Solution Statement
Based on the feedback and our adjustments, we are confident that we’ve solved for users’ needs for:
Control of Time
Users no longer have to worry about missing a train or bus.
Safety
User can now easily submit a safety concern directly to authorities.
Awareness
Users now have a constant and quick stream of real life updates from users like her.
Next Steps
Moving forward, we’d:
- Keep testing various icons to convey the right level of urgency and feeling of help and ease in our emergency button
- Focus more on said emergency feature and the live feeds, these elements proved to be the most valuable to users in making them feel safe, aware, and in control of their time.
- Perhaps even make these features their own, stand alone app. It’s what the users need.