MyTransport.SG mobile app

A case-study project that involve user experience design on a mobile application

UX techniques used in this project:

• Competitive Analysis

• Heuristic Evaluation

• High-Fidelity Prototyping

• Information Architecture analysis and reconstruction

• Mid-Fidelity Prototyping

• Organisation Analysis

• Persona Crafting

• User flow mapping

• User Interview

• Usability Testing

Project Brief

The students of UXDI were to identify problems and/or opportunities with an existing mobile application and utilize the knowledge we had learned about user experience design to come up with a solution.

Disclaimer: This is a self-initiated project. The contents and author of this article is not affiliated with the company/organisation mentioned.

Chosen mobile application was

- About the application -

MyTransport.sg is developed by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) of Singapore. LTA is a statutory board under the Ministry of Transport, that spearheads land transport developments in Singapore. The mobile application is to provide information and eServices such as real time information on bus arrival timing for all land transport users.

- Reason for choosing the application -

As a mobile application owned by the Singapore government, it does not make sense for the application to be receiving such a poor rating in both the App Store and Google Play. Hence, the problems and/or opportunities the current app had were decided to be identified for the project and addressed with the re-designed mobile application.

UX Research

1) Organisation Analysis

To understand more about the MyTransport.sg mobile application, a business analysis of MyTransport.sg was done. Through the business analysis, it was found that MyTransport.sg application is meant to only provide local land transport information. Most of its users are commuters in Singapore, mainly Singaporeans.

An opportunity for this application arises with the occasional usage of Singlish in the application.

As the use of Singlish could improve the user experience of the application. MyTransport.sg mobile application can be differentited from its competitors since Singlish is seen as a part of the Singaporean identity and heritage.

2) Heuristic Evaluation

For a deeper understanding of the mobile application, a heuristic evaluation was done using the Jakob Nielson’s 10 heuristics. Commonly violated heuristics are:

Nielsen’s 2 - Match between system and the real world

• Icons used were not familiar to users

• Short-forms of words are used (e.g. PCN) 

Nielsen’s 4 - Consistency and standards

• The location of buttons vary in different pages

• Icons used for the same feature vary in different pages

Nielsen’s 8 - Aesthetic and minimalist design 

• The design and layout of the pages can be further improved

Besides the few commonly violated heuristics, it was found that the MyTransport.sg mobile application is a comprehensive repository for all transport-related information in Singapore. It does gives all the information but they were badly organised and it is up to the user to analyse and formulate their own journey plan.

3) Current User Flow

For users to plan their journey, they have to go through multiples pages in th app. This is very unproductive as users could not compare their travel options in a glance. 

4) Research Plan

To confirm the research findings, different users were interviewed and they can be categorised into 3 groups with the following intentions:

• Current MyTransport.SG users - Understand the reasons behind their decision to download the application and continue to use it

• Previous MyTransport.sg users - Understand why they had download the mobile application but eventually uninstalled it

• Non MyTransport.sg users - Understand the general expectations users have in a commuting application and why they did not use the MyTransport.sg mobile application

5) User Interview

After interviewing 9 participants, the interviewed responses were organised via affinity mapping. And the following are the insights:

6) Competitive Analysis

With all the information gathered, an competitive analysis was done to compare MyTransport.sg mobile application with its competitors. This analysis was to see where the application stands in the competition and clearly MyTransport.sg is not faring well.

7) Synthesis

Up to this point, the research findings had shown both the user needs and organisational goals. The following problem statements are what had been synthesised from the research.

Problem statement from users’ point of view

MyTransport.sg users need a way to plan their journeys and access only information that is relevant to them. This is because time is wasted synthesising decisions from the raw data that is presented or planning journeys in another mobile application.

Problem statement from app owner’s point of view

MyTransport.sg needs a way to increase engagement with their users and other businesses. This is because users are currently relying on other apps despite LTA being the prime and credible source of traffic news.

Conceptualisation

1) Solution statement

Through theresearch, there’s an understanding of the problems and the opportunities the mobile application was facing, and how to improve on the users’ experience with the application. 

Solution statement

MyTransport.sg will be redeigned by optimising the information architecture and user interface to present only the relevant information to users as they are planning their journey. 

Both problems can be addressed through a redesigned user-centric mobile application. Whereby the app will be more user-friendly with minimum learning curve through

• Improve accessibility to pertinent information (e.g. traffic disruptions, unexpected bus delays…)

• Increase engagement with consumers and B2B interactions

2) User Personas

The app’s target audience are both private and public transport commuters in Singapore. So Mani, one of the 3 persona, is a private transport commuter. He drives to everywhere in Singapore so he needs the mytransport app to check the traffic and his parking options when he is driving. 

LTA who is the owner of the mytransport app aims to bring about a more inclusive public transport system. So the next persona Eileen, is temporarily handicapped so she would need a wheelchair friendly transport mode to commute. 

From the user interviews, it was found that the users mainly uses the app for bus arrival timings and for any MRT disruption notifications. So, the main persona will be Rambu, a polytechnic student who goes everywhere in Singapore via the bus or the mrt. He will be needing the app to check out his best commute options. 

3) Information Architecture

There was a proposed IA plan in mind since all relevant journey planning information on the landing page will be combined.

There was a plan to test out this IA with a card sort but decided to go against it as the categorisation is already based on taxonomy. A tree test was thought to be able to make sure the information organised is intuitive enough for the users. However, many of the test participants found it difficult to perform the tasks as they were confused and could not imagine the tree in the context of a mobile application. Hence, the tree test was ditched and the middle-fidelity prototype was made instead to carry out usability tests.

4) Mid-fi prototype

The plan was to have a usability testing with the middle-fidelity prototype and get feedbacks on it before working on the high-fidelity prototype which will incorporate the feedbacks given. Below are some of the screens from the middle-fidelity prototype which was shown during the usability testing:

Due to limited project time, not every screen of the mobile application was re-designed. Through the research, it was found that the main usage of the mobile application is to plan out the journey from one place to another. As such, the screens for other features in the side menu were not designed due to the limited project time duration.

Evaluation

1) Usability Test Plan

With usability testing, the main purpose was to find out if the redesigned MyTransport.sg app is more easily accessible by the users. And of course, to know if the users are able to enjoy the app yet achieve their goals too. As such the following is the plan for the usability testing:

The usability test participants were assigned to assume the main persona, Rambu. If the participants were able to complete all 5 tasks with an enjoyable rating of at least 4 out of 5 for all tasks, the test would be a success.

2) Testing with mid-fi prototype

Results curated from the usability testing with the mid-fi prototype, the results were not satisfying. And these were the key findings and recommendations given:

The filter and sort buttons were not easily recognisable

• Group the filter icons separately from the sort icons

• Icons will also contain text labels to remove any ambiguity

The green bar for trains and buses to indicate seat availability did not have any legend which can be confusing

• Provide the information details and legend to remove any ambiguity

The expand/collapse button to show the details of all the bus stops was not easily seen by users

• The expand/collapse icon should be in a more prominent position

3) Testing with high-fi prototype

With the findings from the usability testing with the mid-fi prototype, changes were made and the high-fi prototype was created. The same test was done with the hi-fi prototype and the results came back to be satisfactory. 

In addition to the satisfactory results, some bonus comments from the usability testing participants were received too.

• “I love the added Singlish element in the app!”

• “The traffic alert and bookmark features are quite useful.”

• “The interface is clean and simple, its easy to interact with the app. ”