Introducing MEET: A tool to help keep people honest
How to identify, narrow down, and build a product that will address an issue that everyone can relate to.
Every industry has its pros and cons, being able to identify and acknowledge their ups and downs helps keep their target users in the forefront of any development.
When looking at the transportation industry, the good and the bad varies drastically from user to user due to the amount of variables and personal preferences.
For example, some users dislike having to rely on multiple means of transportation to get to places, so they rather take a longer route as long as it is more comfortable and convenient. And then there are users who don’t mind a more complicated route as long as they get there fast.
These initial findings and understandings helped us capture a better picture regarding how to tackle such a robust and diverse industry.
What did we use?
Through the use of multiple UX methodologies we were able to narrow down certain goals and pain points that need to be addressed. Let’s go through them.
First, we started by performing screener surveys to make sure we were taking into consideration the best fitting users.
Once we selected 6 out of the 12 screener participants, we dove a little further into their preferences and perspective to get a well rounded view into what the transportation industry looks like not only from different points of view, but also from different parts of the country.
These interviews helped us understand the problems users’ experience while traveling through public transportation. It has become a part of everyday life, eventually almost everyone will most likely have to use public transportation for work or pleasure at some point in their lives.
With insights from the interviews we were able to build an Affinity Map.
Through Affinity Mapping, we learned very interesting, user specific insights.
A common theme was that Public transportation may be cheaper and convenient but it comes with consequences.
- The train gets crowded during rush hour, and during unexpected situations users’ don’t have the accurate real time updates.
- Most of the users found the Subway or Metro to be more convenient than other public transportations.
- Last but not least, the more people involved in the trip, the harder it is to keep track of time, and location.
After we got an idea of who our users were, we were able to build a well rounded persona we should focus on, along with her emotional journey when planning to meet up with multiple people at a set time.
Through this Journey Map, you can learn a bit more about who our personal, Taylor, is, and most importantly, you can see the roller coaster of emotions she goes through when simply trying to coordinate and execute a meet up with her colleagues.
The interviews helped us understand the problems users’ experience while traveling through public transportation. It has become a part of everyday life, eventually almost everyone will most likely have to use public transportation for work or pleasure at some point in their lives.
As we move forward with our research, now that we have established what are the priorities in terms of our users needs and pain points, it helped us round out the “build the right thing” mentality of this process. Now we are able to proceed to the “build the thing right” phase.
By putting ourselves in our persona’s shoes, we were able to really understand what the problem space really was…
We’ve all been here, regardless if you’re the friend, or Kermit, we can all relate.
So with this in mind, immediate next steps were to build a Feature Prioritization Matrix and MOSCOW Map to help us conceptualize “must have” features and how much effort they would require, and the “nice to have” features that are important but can wait until the next release.
What features we needed to prioritize for the development of the tool keeping in mind, timelines, team members, and budgets.
The following are what we understand NEEDS to be included in the product:
- Arrival Time
- Alternate Routes
- Push Notifications
- Group Collaborations
- Group Travel
Once we narrowed down the features, we conducted a Design Studio within the team, which was vital for us to begin visualizing and creating the first iterations of the tool.
After coming up with a few ideas of how to better layout the features in the tool, we began building the interface on Figma.
Which led us to building…
MEET, a travel companion that doesn’t lie.
After building the prototype we conducted 2 rounds of user testing to understand how the product is being received.
The results from the user tests shed a lot of light into the changes that needed to be prioritized and general feedback that relates to the need and sentiment of the feature so far.
We saw great improvement between user tests, as depicted below:
Round 1 -
Round 2 -
A few notable points from the above user tests:
- The consistent sentiment towards the tool and its functionalities was no lower than 4 out of 5 stars in terms of easiness.
- Time on task increased in round 2, but the feedback was positive that it was mainly due to the small learning curve to read all the options on the screen.
- There were no task failures in any of the testing rounds.
Once the mobile view was complete, we began work on the web view to expand on its functionalities.
As depicted above, the web view has the same offerings and functionalities as the mobile view, which gives the user the freedom to use it across platforms.
So, moving forward, what do we recommend?
Based on our research, findings, multiple iterations of the tool, and the upwards trends shown on user test completion and sentiment, we can confidently recommend the continued research and development of this offering.
Immediate next steps would be to conduct a few more rounds of User Testing (both on the mobile and desktop view) to finalize last changes based on feedback, and then to begin reprioritizing features for future releases.
So next time you’re meeting up with friends, don’t worry, you’ll know the truth.
