Transit Kiosk

Company

RideKC is the public transportation system in the Kansas City metro area, serving over 12 million riders per year.

Users

Bus and streetcar riders, primarily in the downtown Kansas City, MO area.

Challenge

The touchscreen kiosk service is currently designed and operated by Smart City Media but with multiple usability issues around the needs of public transit riders.

Role

End-to-end product design and project lead.

Current UI

The current focus of the interface centers around marketing and local organization announcements.

While it may generate much-needed revenue, unfortunately does not serve a range of users in the downtown area and they are considered under-utilized.

Competitor Analysis

The goal of the competitor analysis was to see what other transit riders might use for finding vital public transit information on the street or at a transit stop, either via their mobile device or at a similar kiosk in a different city.

Creating User Personas

I crafted two user personas based on riders with the most different personas.

This process brought significant value by allowing me to tailor design solutions that were not only functional but also highly user-centric. For visitors, the focus was on ease of navigation and access to information, while for daily riders, the emphasis was on efficiency and reliability.

Creating Journey Maps

By mapping out each step of their interactions, from initial contact to final destination, I was able to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement.

This process brought immense value by enabling me to design solutions that addressed specific user needs at every stage of their journey, ensuring a smoother and more satisfying experience for both tourists and regular commuters.

Identifying Constraints

No project is without constraints so I identified major potential constraints early on in the process, before designing.

• Retain ad space: The kiosks must retain sellable ad space for revenue purposes.
• Work with existing brand: Branding elements such as color must be retained.
• Development partner: The process of building a new interface could go in two directions. Presenting ideas to the current developer to see if they could customize the platform or select a new partner. We do not have an in-house development team.

Low Fidelity Wireframing

I began sketching on paper and then in Figma to begin blocking out content and figuring out placement strategies.

Early on in the sketching I found that a rectangular banner at the top worked best for advertising space in order to prioritize the lower space for key interactive features.

I also found that some content would need to be static so people not able to interact with the kiosk while it was in use could still determine information like the time and place.

High Fidelity Wireframes

Moving on to high fidelity wireframes with the end-goal of creating prototypes to test with users at these transit stops. As the sole designer of the project and company, I was able to easily apply branding with special attention to setting a high standard of visual accessibility.

Testing the Prototype

Testing these prototypes required some concessions as I was not able to have any designs live on a real touchscreen. Instead, I worked with my printshop to produce at scale print productions of the screens.

I was able to get great feedback from riders waiting on a transit stop. For example, larger arrows that were meant to show interactivity were mistaken as directional arrows that might be providing wayfinding around the transit stop, so they were either removed or reduced in size.

Thoughts

Evaluating accessibility of the design at size was important to ensure the interactive screen elements (i.e. buttons or scrollable content) are kept on the lower half to ensure access for all users.

This testing of assumptions could continue with a wider variety of physical and mental disabilities.

Next Steps

The next step would involve potentially applying for a grant to work with a developer to move forward with building a fully-functioning platform.