Messy whiteboarding process during the second ideation round.

Ideate, Round 2

How might we ensure "safety in numbers" in transit? Our solution to recreate the group traveling experience.

We revisited the concept of group travel and “safety in numbers,” which means that being part of a group lessens the chances of harm happening. For the idea to be successful, we needed incentive for casual users to use the app for features other than just safety.

The second round of ideation led to a social transit app, where users release their location and passively update their statuses to other riders. There would also be achievement system that would incentivize even the most casual users to use the app. When concept testing this idea, users told us that the idea was “interesting and fun” take on safety and the achievement system “gamified the experience.” These insights would affect our branding and visual design.

Animated fly ins were crucial to create speed bumps to help users read important information.

Usability Testing

Two rounds of usability tests were run on mid- and high-fidelity prototypes with 6 total users

We used a mid-fidelity prototype to catch early errors in the flow before fully creating the design in high fidelity. Tasks 1-3 were completed error-free; however, we got plenty of feedback for task 4, the reporting a safety issue feature.

During the mid-fidelity testing (left), users did not feel a sense of urgency, nor did they read all of the text besides the title. We modified this in the high fidelity prototype (right) by adding the highlight red to denote seriousness, as well as forcing the user to click an overlay when they first enter the flow.

Color was also added to denote the importance of this feature.

“Report an App Bug” feature on other apps. The button was moved up and changed visually to improve its hierarchy, given its important function. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to gauge users’ opinion on this change.

When users were asked about their overall thoughts on the app idea, we got positive feedback. One said, “It’s an interesting idea. It’s nice to be reminded that there’s people like you that are riding BART because it’s really easy to just have your guard up.” Another participant said, “It’s a fun idea because transit is usually an unsocial activity and that element is brought back in.”

The process from whiteboard to user-informed high fidelity mocks :)

Concluding Thoughts and Next Steps

It’s hard to describe just how many times this project changed directions conceptually. My initial idea actually was to design a Clipper e-commerce app; however, user research revealed deeper and more serious BART problems. Solving for safety then resulted in fun colors and pup avatars that gathered a normally unsocial community. This was an unconventional approach to a serious problem, but I’m very happy with how it turned out.

During the usability tests, we learned that the participants were very intrigued by a social transit app; however, they still had so many questions to how it’d work. Many had privacy concerns, “Is it creepy that people see where you’re going and getting off?” and “Is there a way that these avatars can be verified, so that I know that they’re not stalkers?”

‍We had very brief consideration for privacy given the timeline, however, these were great questions to further develop the project in the next iteration. Also, these discussions always brought up an interesting question: just how much privacy are people willing to trade off for the ability to connect and seek safety with others?