User Research, Interaction, Visual Design, Prototyping & Testing.
September'18 - December'18
PrototypeTo improve users experience while using Caltrain application. Making it more efficient for users to schedule their commute and thus improving desirability and accessibility.
Caltrain application mainly focuses on the timetable and schedule. Thus it makes users to carry their clipper cards and passes while traveling.Therefore, adding features such as ticketing, scheduling your commute as per your convenience and timetable of the trains will make passenger's life easy and hassle free.
Redesigning the official ticketing app of Caltrain,
thus improving user satisfaction and meeting user expectations by introducing new features such as scheduling the commute, daily train timetable and ticketing.
The main goal was to research about the users way of ticketing, planning their commute and thus understand the goals, pain points of the users in order to deliver a desirable solution.
We conducted 20 interviews at different Caltrain stations to understand the users. This helped us in exploring some new problems and understand the issues they face while travelling with Caltrain.
" I have stopped using Caltrain application because it's just of no use as I carry my clipper card and as there is no official ticketing app. I always have to open my browser to look for the timetable and that is just very irritating because sometimes it gets very confusing while reading because its just a list with timings, that's it! " Interview Link
As we began the research, we found that there are many competitors in the market who dedicatedly have applications only for creating a packing list based on the weather. We then also took this into consideration that creating the packing list is the most crucial part of the packing process.
After carrying out user interviews and analyzing the research I found that users want to:
1. Purchase tickets on the app
2. Schedule a trip
3. Access the timetable on the app and plan trips
4. Create alerts about their journey
After creating personas, I defined 3 user journeys based on the problems faced.
Starting with low fidelity wireframes as I wanted to carry out user testing walkthroughs and iterate.
I printed the paper prototype and tested it with peers and AAU graduates to understand their journey and interactions.
I carried our user testing with my peers, friends, and Caltrain passengers and found many insights from users and that helped me in defining the user experience. I tested, tested and tested and iterated designs for improving experience. I also tested micro interactions within the app and got insights. I got feedback which proved to be useful and important to understand user perspective.
It was easy to define the style guide as Caltrain itself has defined the color. I wanted the design to be intuitive and also give a fresh and new look and feel to this app. Beautification is the key to attract users and I wanted to create a desired experience by using fresh colors and give a modernized look.
After interviewing the target audience at various stations I could identify that the Caltrain App needs an update. This user research coupled with my Market research definitively concluded that the Caltrain App needed a redesign to overhaul its usability and intuitiveness in order to improve the user experience. This project helped in various aspects such as documentation of the user research and the market research. Updating the app by adding new features such as train schedules, ticket activation and creating alerts/ notification proved to be challenging.
