CARTO

DELIVERABLES

HIGH FIDELITY APP MOCKUP
VISUAL IDENTITY

ROLE

UI/UX DESIGN
UX RESEARCH
ILLUSTRATION
ART DIRECTION
DEVELOPMENT

DATE

DEC 7, 2024

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Goal

To design something that simplifies navigation for people using public transit, both online and offline. Many users find metro and transit maps difficult to interpret and adapt to, especially when navigating complex routes or in areas with limited connectivity. My app aims to connect different versions of a public transit map, providing a clear and intuitive way for users to understand their route and navigate obstacles.

Core features

1. Navigate seamlessly across the layers of any transit system.
2. Real-time updates about obstacles
3. Offline functionality – access that navigation anywhere

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In the beginning

In Spring 2024, I attended the Transit Mapping Symposium in Abu Dhabi, which welcomed mapmakers, designers, commissioners, academics, and fans from across the world to discuss mapmaking strategies and ethics. Panelists and speakers inspired me to think about transit systems and how they exist only in so far as they are represented by maps.
There were some questions left unanswered by designers and scholars at the conference:

1. How do we demonstrate complexity on dense networks?
2. How can we better address stations and hubs, where painpoints are concentrated?
3. How do we create more coherent signage and iconography to represent the continuity of lines and stations?

I also conducted a competitive analysis of existing transit applications, and then I performed a heuristic evaluation on the most direct competitor.

Process
people to thing

Concept Discovery Interviews

To kick it off, I formalized early conversations around public transit, hoping to find a place to intervene as a designer. I had 15 short interviews with people from medium cities, like Madison and Tampa, and big cities like New York, Mumbai, and Dubai. From these interviews, I extracted pain points and mapped their transit preference to different topics they cared about. The idea for a map integration app emerged from two themes. A common theme was complexity - several people described feeling stressed interpreting static maps. A friction point is navigating transfers and service disruptions. A similar theme was the frustration with offline navigation. People expressed a desire to feel in control during long transits between cities or underground.

Turning this research into two personas helped concentrate my efforts on who Carto can best serve.

“You can’t make things simple,
but you can help people manage the complexity”
– Don Norman

Improvement Opportunities

These helped me understand existing tools and identify opportunities for improvement: pain points: how to easily find their route, interpret the map, and manage unexpected obstacles.
2. Connect multiple views (station-level, route-level, city-wide).
2. Focus on station navigation
3. Offline map functionality, where users could still access key route information without needing an active internet connection.

With user flows, I outlined the steps people can go through to accomplish tasks in Carto, deciding what choices they could make and what features they would encounter.

I then created low-fidelity mockups that would serve as early iterations of these task flows.

Usability Testing

Task-based studies:

Have people chart their own route using a starting point and destination I provide.

Major finding

1. people always know their starting point, they need to be able to find that: I need to emphasize that feature on every page to help people find their starting point.
2. People are not concerned about the station layout when they’re actually charting the route: Make it an easy but not necessary part of the experience to see the station layout

Takeaways

Divide up tasks:

I made so many mistakes at the beginning because I had my eye on the end goal. A common failure in usability studies is using research to validate hypotheses, rather than to hear open feedback. Learning to divide up steps and structure the process allowed me to listen and design better.

Aesthetic Design in UX:

While functionality and usable flows are critical, decisions about color, font, and style can have a profound impact on the user experience and bring an overall joy to the product that sets it apart. This case study highlighted how visual design choices enhance usability and set a product apart. Visuals do more than make a product pretty—they play an important role in guiding users, creating trust, and providing a cohesive experience.

Documentation:

Effective documentation through wireframes, journey maps, personas, and design systems, is essential for aligning a project and communicating to stakeholders. As I embark to improve my UX design skills, documenting discrete steps also allows me to track my own progression and achievements. As I continue to iterate on this project, keeping structured documentation with data and prototypes will ensure a thoughtful and joyful user experience.