MTA Google Map Redesign

Transportation Problem | UX Design

Srishtik has moved from India to NYC for six months so far. She lives in Brooklyn and travels a lot by MTA. When she plans to go to a place she’s not familiar with, she will search the route on Google Map Mobile before leaving. She has been using Google Map for four to five years and is very used to the app.

I interview Srishtik face-to-face first and then asked her to answer some additional questions through google doc.

Interview

When taking MTA, Srishtik often finds that the information Google Map provides doesn’t correspond to the real train condition including delays and stop changes. She has to go back to the former station to check right real-time information at MTA kiosks, which is not very convenient and sometimes will cause her being late. She said Google Maps will sometimes provide alerts but they are not helpful at all. Because of the inaccurate information provided by Google Map, she also uses “NYC My Transit” regularly, but she still prefers Google Map.

Research

New York’s subways have run for a very long time and serve millions of people. Unlike London, Tokyo, and Paris, they operate 24 hours a day. That means limited overnight maintenance. So there are a lot of delays, stop and service changes, especially happen on weekends. How can users get correct real-time updates using Google Map?

In order to solve the problem, I thought I should know how Google Map gets real-time train status from MTA. Unfortunately, there is no clear evidence showing how they work together. According to the MTA website, they provide real-time data feeds to app developers for free. (http://datamine.mta.info/) But some people said that actually Google’s developers (and Apple’s, ours, and everyone else’s) don’t actually have access to any of the MTA’s service disruption data. So this is the essential issue.

Solution

The best solution is obvious, asking MTA to open the access to service disruption data. But I think I focus too much on dealing with the data.

So, what else can we do to improve the user experience?

The first thing I changed is to make the alert more striking, so users can see clearly which stops are affected if they tape in to see the details.

The most important thing is, I give access to check the information on the MTA website if users are not sure about it. Since the MTA website is not that user-friendly (having too much unrelated information), I hope to give users essay access to it on Google Map. If users are still concerned about the accuracy. I designed a feedback system. Users can choose whether the information is correct or not. Their feedback will contribute to the matching statistics and help other users make judgments.

User Test and Iterations

After the user test, Srishtik suggested adding “Google” on the first interface or it would be confusing.

She also said besides getting alerts after searching the route, she would like to receive alerts about her regular route, like the information about the F train. So I added another function: alerts subscription. You can subscribe and unsubscribe from your regular routes easily. If the MTA service has some changes, you can get alerts in advance and won’t get unrelated pushes.