Brantford Transit Eye
Using Design Thinking to help the City of Brantford promote climate-friendly activities in the city residents.
Date: September–December 2019
Problem Statement: ……….
Goal: Encourage the residents of the city of Brantford to adopt climate-friendly habits.
Process:
Familiarization with Project
Generative Research
Ideation and Wireframing
Usability Testing
Client Presentation
Brantford Transit Eye loading screen mockup
01 Familiarization with Project
Our work began in September of 2019 with a presentation from the Climate Change Officer of the city. The team spent some time getting to know each other before diving into our initial discussions of the objective we had been given.
With these discussions, we all got on the same page as a group, and began our very first ideation phase. Splitting up, we individually brainstormed as many ideas as we could to address our objective.
We then took all our ideas and organized them into an affinity map. We grouped the ideas by general sector that they would apply to, such as household emissions, events to promote climate-friendly information, programs that would provide rewards for climate-friendly behaviour, etc.
One group of ideas as a result of affinity mapping in the initial ideation session.
Thought cloud of findings of generative research and ideation.
Ideation based on generative research
02 Generative Research
Next, myself and one other group member met with the Climate Change Officer who presented our initial objective. We discussed more information about the city's goals, hopes for the project, and any previous research she could provide us to get started.
We brought all this information back to the team to analyzed the data. The biggest finding we came across was that the vast majority of emissions in the city come from personal vehicle transportation. We looked back on our ideas, and found many focused around encouraging the use of the public transportation system. With this in mind, we narrowed our project scope to focus on how we may reduce the number of personal vehicle emissions, specifically how we could encourage the use of the public transportation system.
We then began our user interviews. To ensure a wide variety of responses, we conducted semistructured interviews in various parts of the city, such as the bus terminal, a car parkade, and a business-heavy area of the city.
The questions we asked dove into the reasons behind users' transportation habits. We hoped to find what they used most frequently as transportation, why they did, and why they either did or didn't use the public transportation on a regular basis.
The key points we found from our user research were:
The public transportation system was unreliable
Confusion arose when finding the proper bus route to take
The convenience of taking a personal vehicle was greater than public transportation.
From this, we created two Personas: Brian Smith (a car driver) and Angela Lee (a public transportation user)
03 Ideation and Wireframing
Further research showed that while there was a website to find bus routes, it wasn't accessible on mobile. For a service based on moving around, it's crucial to have a mobile-friendly solution.
This was our starting point.
As a team, we had a second ideation session in order to come up with mobile-friendly ideas to solve the biggest pain points that prevented users from using the public transportation system.
First wireframe of the app, drawn on a whiteboard with the team
Information Architecture of the app based on usability test results
04 Usability Testing
With our solution and wireframes we conducted a round of usability testing with other students. We tasked students with completing various tasks using our design, and made some changes based on where participants had trouble.
After our usability tests, our final solution was an app we called Brantford Transit Eye with the following features:
Text message alerts notifying the user about delays and arrival times without the need for cellular data.
A favourite routes page where users can decide which routes they wanted notifications for and when.
A map of the city with options to show or hide each route
A search option to determine the best route from point A to point B.
05 Client Presentation
In early December, we presented our research, process and final solution to the Climate Change Officer for the city. Overall, she was thrilled with our solution and we discussed further steps with the city.
At this point, our time with the client was over. We made plans to present to the City Council, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions beginning shortly after, we were unable to pursue the work further at that time. However, we are looking towards further steps with this project should the opportunity arise, and hope to see positive changes develop in the city's climate change initiative over the coming years!
Final app branding applied to a brochure given to attendees of the final presentation
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