Overview
BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) is a heavy-rail public transit system that connects the San Francisco Peninsula with communities in the East Bay and South Bay. People utilize BART for their every day transportation needs including commute and recreation. However, since the start of COVID, BART has been experiencing a drastic decline in ridership. Currently ridership is 88% below pre-pandemic levels. Many people who previously used BART are not riding because they want to avoid crowds and potential exposure to coronavirus.
My Role
Product Designer
The Team
3 Product Designers, BART Chief Communications Officer
My Contributions
Redesigned experience to promote awareness of BART’s safety measures and key safety data
User research
Challenge
How might we ensure riders are aware of safety measures at BART and give them confidence to ride?
BART riders are unaware what safety measures BART is taking to prevent the spread of coronavirus. They think BART is unsafe because they see dirty windows and trash whereas BART is frequently disinfecting surfaces, checking for mask compliance, and trying to reduce train crowding.
Approach
Defining Problem Scope & Hypothesis
As a first step we reached out to BART’s Chief Communication Officer to better understand their challenges.
Alicia was concerned that riders were not aware of the 15 step plan they had implemented to combat COVID. Her concern was validated by our user survey findings:
Constraints
I decided to focus on the BART mobile app (over web) since it was more commonly used by our surveyed riders for trip planning. I did consider lower-cost enhancements to marketing outreach (social media, newsletters, improved signage at BART stations) but since this is a product design project, I constrained my solutions within the app.
Safety Communication Issues in Mobile App
My heuristic evaluation revealed significant challenges finding and interpreting safety information:
1. Difficult Finding & Text Heavy
Safety information was hidden in a general advisory banner which requires users to open a drop-down and navigate through a text-heavy page to find.
2. Too Many Steps & Not Mobile-Friendly
While well-intentioned, the 15 steps and multiple pages were overwhelming at first glance.
The PDF format made it difficult to read as users need to zoom in to see the text.
3. No Data Summarization
Important safety data points were shared but too dense to consume as they were listed by day / time in long tables and not summarized.
The Recreational Rider
I created a persona from my user survey and interview insights to help me empathize with BART riders.
Design Process
For inspiration, I looked at popular transit and health tracking apps to see how safety information was communicated and data summarized. Ideas were then sketched, converted to lo-fidelity prototypes, tested on users, and iterated. When converting to high-fidelity, I followed the official BART brand book closely utilizing their color, font, and shape guidelines.
Design Solutions
Quick and Clear Access to Safety Measures
Topic Organization and Prioritization
Data Visualization
Design Evolution
Usability testing was a critical part of my design process and led to the following changes in my solutions:
Larger Banner with Clear Language
Testers were confused by the language: “COVID News.” They expected to find news articles about COVID instead of safety measures at BART. A few commented that the banner felt small given the importance of the information.
I increased the size of the banner and text. I also made the language more clear: “Learn about our COVID Response.”
Updates instead of News
Similar to the banner, testers did not engage with “News” in the navigation bar since they did not associate it with information on safety measures.
I changed the name to “Updates” and chose a speaker icon to make it more clear it was related to BART announcements.
Optimized Safety Measures Screen Layout
Testers were misled by the reference to the 15-step plan expecting to see 15 topics whereas I consolidated steps for easier consumption.
To simplify, I removed the plan reference and prioritized important topics on the top of the page. I also made it easy to browse topic content by showing it in the same view.
Next Steps & Final Thoughts
Even though this was a short project, we made good progress towards understanding BART’s ridership challenges and proposing viable solutions. If given more time, I would love to continue to test and iterate my hi-fidelity designs and encourage BART to adopt some of our easier to implement ideas. Simple changes like improving banner visibility and language could go a long way in ensuring people are aware of all of the measures BART is taking to keep riders safe and in turn, improve their ridership numbers. I’m really grateful to Alicia Trost for spending the time to give us the insider perspective at BART. Her insights heavily influenced our project scope and direction.
