Though it may not be the first thing that comes to mind, if you want to learn the basics of user experience design, try a job in public transit.
For five years, I sharpened my design skills at Kansas City’s public transit agency, RideKC, wearing many hats as the go-to “creative” on the team. Prior to my being there, the agency was primarily focused on moving vehicles up and down the street and had an unfortunate negative stigma in the city.
I championed a more human-centric approach and utilized many UX tools to improve the service. Here are five examples of tools we used to make a better transit experience.
1. Good branding
The number one priority of a transit agency’s brand is recognizability. This removes any potential friction in a rider’s experience, especially those trying it out for the first time.
We worked to make sure the brand was cohesively applied to every customer interaction. The pass they buy at the store, the bus stop sign they wait at, the social media post about service changes—all elements need a brand that is immediately apparent.
Beyond just being recognizable, I’ve always been a big believer in the power of a well calculated brand. This becomes exponentially important when you’re trying to improve ridership for a transit system plagued by stigma.
The new brand we designed is fresh and approachable with recognizable elements of the city drawn in to build on positive association and shape a comfortable and trustworthy experience for riders.
Out of clutter, find simplicity.
– Albert Einstein
2. Inclusivity
The start of inclusive communication is selecting the appropriate channels. Based on survey feedback, we knew only about 50% of our users felt they had reliable mobile phone access. Yet we needed to communicate service alerts cheaply, quickly, and across a large region on a daily basis.
I researched and championed a new digital communication platform, Alert Media, that accommodates a range of preferences from voicemail to push notification, and allows riders to select their specific services so they are never bombarded with unnecessary messages about a transit service they don’t even use.
Within that and other channels, I continually refined elements of our visual communication to be as inclusive as possible. I developed iconography to describe important service features and meticulously edited copy to be understandable at a low reading level and brought in translators to include Spanish language copy on high-visibility projects.
Never assume your understanding of words or concepts will match those of your users.
– Jakob Nielsen
3. User Interviews
In the public transit world, public meetings are essentially user interviews, and they are equally as important. We regularly conducted meetings to explore how the service impacts real people.
Meetings often began as a formal presentation followed by staff breaking out into the crowd to ask questions. I would walk through multiple attendees’ use cases to see how they felt about the changes. This was also a great way to test out new design formats for schedules and maps to make sure they were easy to follow.
Transit riders love to share their opinions, sometimes with great passion. But I have a knack for active listening and found that I could use that to calm nerves and allow actionable problem solving to occur.
Following the meeting, I would submit my findings to the team to potentially reassess aspects of the service, much like a design thinking process.
We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally.
– Susan Cain
4. Fieldwork
Being a passionate transit rider meant I was always conducting fieldwork. On the way to the office or running errands, I observed the experience as a rider myself.
How easy was it to plan a trip? What was it like to stand at this transit stop? Did anything unexpected happen during the ride? Did any riders face obstacles during their experience?
This task takes a particularly trained eye and observant mind but fieldwork undoubtedly fed my ideas for improving the experience more than any other tool.
Innovation should start by getting close to users and observing their activities.
– Donald A. Norman
5. Surveys
Many on the team were satisfied with data points like ridership totals from the vehicles’ automatic passenger counters (APCs). However, we know nothing about what the riders think about the service from these numbers.
Surveys are the best way to collect a wide range of opinions quickly. Though digital surveys can be sent out in minutes on our digital channels, we were legally required to capture a more inclusive set of data, which often meant donning our RideKC name tags and heading to the highly trafficked transit centers to pass out paper surveys.
I am not a designer, I am a sifter.
– Massimo Vignelli
We know that in our fast-moving society, everything is constantly changing. New buildings pop up, funding becomes available, populations shift, the economy tanks, jobs move, new tech surfaces. This means that public transit should always be adapting to the changes happening around them. It is imperative that public transit agencies keep their focus on a human-centric approach to the public transit experience by utilizing CX and UX tools to maintain an enjoyable and equitable experience for everyone.