Movility: Design Challenge

About Public Transit and Mobility

Think about your daily commute. How many signs do you pass by? How many obstacles do you see and navigate around on your way? Think about bumps, holes, curbs, roads under construction, random stones, pieces of trash, stairways, people, animals... How many times do you have to cross the street? How many people do you come across, how many times have you had to change direction, or bumped into other people? Think about the public transit services you use. How many of them actually have elevators and are accessible? How many times have you complained about the crowd, business, old infrastructure and design, long wait times, and overall problems with your commute? Well, now imagine you had physical disabilities, or you were a wheelchair user, visually impaired, or hearing impaired, and how much more challenging your daily routine would be.

Findings: Accessible Transportation

25.5 million is the number of Americans who have travel-limiting disabilities. 70% is the percentage of people who reduce their day-to-day travel because of their disabilities. The ratio of people aged 18 to 64 who work full or part-time if they have travel-limiting disabilities is ⅕ (one-fifth). Out of 472 stations in the New York City Subway system, only 25% (roughly) are accessible stations, making New York— one of the lowest percentages of any major transit system in the world. Judging from the statistics, anecdotal evidence, and simply from daily life observations, accessible transportation, holistically, is a major problem in cities. Mobility is freedom and a basic human right. To ensure that everybody has equal access to transit as well as freedom and opportunity to work, interact with their communities, have access to healthcare, and simply have a good quality of life, significant intervention needs to occur.

General

• slow, unreliable and overcrowded public transit system

• subway stations lacking elevators

• old public buses with nonfunctioning wheelchair lifts

• operators often being untrained 

• service changes with no warning

• economic privilege to

  • live within walking distance to the workplace

  • afford personal vehicle modified with adaptive equipment

  • have guide dogs (cost of breeding, raising, and training the dog approaches $48,000

Access-A-Ride Paratransit Service

• limited availability

• imprecise and long pickup windows (unpredictable)

• scheduled at least one day in advance

• personal injury lawsuits

• costly when used regularly

• cancellation only the day before without a penalty

Uber and Lyft WAVs & Other Apps

• long wait times

• insufficient number of vehicles

• some drivers being unprofessional and disrespectful

• lack of affordability

POV Statement

Sandra needs a way to transport effectively and safely because she wants to be on time and stress-free in her daily life and achieve a sense of independence.

User Persona

Further, I formulated a user persona based on insights, findings gathered from the research, and recurring themes that represent wheelchair users

User Journey

I then mapped out a user journey that relates to the user persona in a specific scenario. I made sure to address a series of steps, touchpoints, channels, and the emotional state of the user supplemented by quotes in each st

Empathy Map

Creating an empathy map further enabled me to deepen my understanding of the users and their problems and define potential functional requirements before ideating solutions.

Solution Sketching

I sketched quick ideas based on the ideas that I had in mind. Initially, I thought of presenting two options to users who need assistance, in areas of transportation and shopping. In terms of terminology, I was debating between requester/caller/user vs. volunteer. In order to add to the social aspect of the app, I decided to include the “Connections” section which basically shows the interaction history between users who offer help and users who need help.

Low-fidelity Wireframes

I further developed initial sketches into low-fidelity digital wireframes, after receiving some feedback from my professor and classmates. I decided to exclude shopping assistance to narrow down the focus and put more emphasis on transportation, since there are other similar apps in the industry for task completion purposes. I used friendly language and decided to have people choose between “I need mobile assistance” vs. “I'm here to help.” Because wheelchair users are not the only target user group and people with visual and hearing impairments also have mobility issues, I included those options to choose from so that the application would adjust accordingly.

Branding and Design Decisions

Before moving to high-fidelity wireframes, I did some quick research and looked at existing applications, logos, and practices to decide on the color scheme and the fonts, overall the branding. In the context of the transportation industry, I found that yellow, blue and orange are abundantly used, which have meanings like optimism, trust, and efficiency, as indicated on the right. I decided on using alternating shades of blue and orange, as they are complementary colors and blue is also used in the medical field, typically associated with credibility, security, trust, professionalism, cleanliness, and calmness. These are values that are important to users and the goal of the application.