The day is hot and sunny.
I see vendors with their fruit carts calling out to people to buy their products.
I see people talking to each other in different languages trying to understand each other and communicate.
On the sides of the bustling streets in South India, seeing fruit and vegetable vendors is not an uncommon sight. However, being a street vendor is not easy.
Who is our target audience?
Street vendors in Bangalore who sell fruit, vegetables and flowers, and working professionals living in the vicinity.
The day is hot and sunny.
I see vendors with their fruit carts calling out to people to buy their products.
I see people talking to each other in different languages trying to understand each other and communicate.
On the sides of the bustling streets in South India, seeing fruit and vegetable vendors is not an uncommon sight. However, being a street vendor is not easy.
Who is our target audience?
Street vendors in Bangalore who sell fruit, vegetables and flowers, and working professionals living in the vicinity.
On the sides of the bustling streets in South India, seeing fruit and vegetable vendors is not an uncommon sight. However, these vendors face a lot of difficulties - unable to sell their produce, don’t know where the demand lies and dealing with language barriers.
VIA TRANSPORTATION
Integrating a feature in Via Transportation's app to help visually challenged people have easier access to transportation
SKILLS
User Research, Strategy, Ideation, Wireframing, Design and User Testing
DURATION
3 months
CLIENT
Via Transportation
TEAM
Leo Luo,
Matan Sagee,
Manika Agarwal,
Nethra Gomatheswaran
SNEAK PEEK
Using different screen colors to help drivers identify passengers was a part of our key feature. This was derived from our insights and user research. Read the case study to know the other features that help hailing cabs easier for people with visual disabilities.
underserved market
We spoke to over 20 people of varying backgrounds, ages, gender, and disabilities, in order to understand what difficulties they have when it comes to accessing transportation. We wanted to narrow our focus group to keep the solution as effective, customized and focused as possible. Therefore, we identified a segment of our target audience: visually challenged people. They struggle the most when it comes to accessing transportation, and booking cabs. Therefore, we narrowed our target audience to visually challenged people.
INSIGHTS
95%
TARGET AUDIENCE
Why should this topic be addressed immediately?
1 out of every 4 people in the United States has a disability. Several of these disabilities make it difficult for people to access something as basic as transportation, on a daily basis. We believe that design should be inclusive, and our team set our to help Via Transportation with research, design, prototyping, and testing a solution that can be more inclusive.
needs most help with transportation
Many of the insights we discovered were faced by the target audience every time they wanted to hail a cab. The current application they use, Access-a-ride, needs to be booked 2 days in advance, and the following insights are challenges faced when using Access-a-ride, and other private cab companies.
of the target group experienced delays in ETA that they were not made aware of and had to wait at the pick-up point for a long time.
10-60 mins
is the minimum wait time at the pick-up point. 95% of the target group interviewed waited for at least 10-60 minutes, at least once while hailing cabs, using Access-a-ride.
60%
of the target audience has had cab drivers cancel their rides when they knew that passengers needed more assistance.
What were our most surprising discoveries?
How can we design a solution that is inclusive and helps both drivers and passengers make the cab-hailing process easier?
IDEATION
How did our insights inform our ideas?
Our team that consisted of 4 people came up with 120 ideas of different ways to help transportation be more accessible to people with visual disabilities. With the questions listed below, we narrowed down and removed ideas that did not answer match the following criteria:
ROUGH SKETCHES OF SOME IDEAS
IDEA #1
We wanted to test phone vibrations, which increase in frequency as the driver gets close by in order to notify the passenger, similar to the Hot-Cold game kids play.
OUR TEST
We wanted to find quick and easy ways to test if vibrations would work. We put out phones on vibrate mode and sent WhatsApp messages to trigger vibrations of different frequencies of vibrations.
IDEA #2
Pairing up the driver and the passenger with light, so the driver can identify the passenger based on the light he sees the passenger holding up.
OUR TEST
We tried various colors that would stand out on bright days, gloomy days, busy and scarce pathways. In the photo below, the color is tested from about 50 meters away.
IDEA #3
We attempted to guide the passenger to the driver, based on what side of the road the driver was located on.
OUR TEST
We tested this idea with the team, at a scarcely populated junction. However, the GPS was not accurate, and this idea was not feasible.
Testing the color feature to help drivers identify passengers at different times of the day and at different parts of the city
DESIGN FOCUS
How did understanding the user journey help us narrow down our design focus?
PROTOTYPING + USER TESTING
How did we test our concepts in the quickest, most efficient way?
We tested our solutions with 12 people from sessions at Visions at Selis Manor. The rest of our prototypes were tested with the team for technical feasibility.
We decided to focus on the pick-up process, given that most of the problems stemmed from this phase. The below-illustrated user journey highlights pain points faced by the passengers and drivers at each step.
SOLUTION
How can our feature make Via Transportation more accessible?
To ensure that no driver cancels a ride with a passenger who needs assistance, it is only revealed 2 minutes before if a passenger is visually challenged. By that time, the driver is almost the destination and chances of the driver canceling the ride are low.
ETA > 2minutes
ETA = 2minutes
For the Driver
The driver's screen remains unchanged, and just sees the ETA in real-time.
For the Passenger
The vibrations + sound increase in frequency as the driver gets closer, signaling to the passenger to start walking towards the pick-up point.
The passenger holds up the phone with this colour, and the driver identifies the passenger based on the color.
Once the driver is close-by, he picks a color that the passenger's phone will light up in, therefore, helping him identify the passenger.
Nethra Gomatheswaran 2020
