The target segmentation comprised of commuters that use public transit because they don't own a car. People who are looking to have a safe, comfortable, streamlined experience and enjoy their daily travel.

After the interviews, our team went through the notes we took and pieced together common thoughts that our interviewees had. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to focus on someone with a disability that had to navigate transit in the city.

There seemed to be a large hole to fill to help those with disabilities be better served by public transit. That group maybe couldn't walk, or was hard of hearing or had anxiety while using public transit in New York City.

HMW make the accessible routing process easier/quicker? Like using apple pay at checkout?

Through doing this brainstorm process I came up with possible solutions to enhance the access to information for those with disabilities.

We changed the existing apps information architecture and decided to add a preference menu that would house the accessibility mode options. A user would go into their preferences and turn on accessibility mode.

This was when I started thinking about how I wanted to handle showing the accessible stations that were available on the overall map. I knew one of the main issues facing NYC transit users are a lack of consistent information on whether elevators actually work. So I knew I wanted some sort of display on whether a user could actually use a specific station or type of transit.

I also read that using different shapes to signify whether something is available or not could be helpful to aid people who are color blind and cannot rely on just red or green colors for valid or invalid. With these sketches I was thinking of a few options from checkmarks to the landmark icon. I eventually decided to show handicap accessible stations with the handicapp icon.

I reviewed other phone applications and modes of navigation such as information kiosks and websites. I needed several pieces of information such as location of elevators or where you can get service, where the entrance and exits are, what problems there might be, and a way to submit feedback on the station.

Users were unaware of what many of the icons meant. For instance on the search results page. The user didn't know what the wheel chair, eye or the ear meant. I switched out this information for more specific transit information.

Users wanted to see where they were in relation to their specific search. To address this I added an icon to the map showing where the user was when looking at transit specific information. For instance on the transit station map there is now an icon showing where the user is.

Button location was unintuitive in the station specific information page. To help fix this I moved the buttons that interacted with the map above so the user can look at the map and toggle the buttons at the same time.

I spent a lot of time researching how people used the new york city transit. I found that there was a severe lack of transit options for those who are disabled. I was able to read articles detailing disabled peoples use of transit but found it difficult to interview anyone with a physical disability. Because of this I had to rely on assumptions.
‍
After completeing many revisions of the accessibility mode I became aware that these options could help any user, not just Alicia.

Covid has changed how people use public transit and will continue to change how people use it in the future. How many people will still use transit. Will the current target segmentation make sense in a year, a couple years?

Finally, working through the testing and task flows helped bring about more ideas that would be great to explore in the future.