User Experience and Mass Transit Websites: Planning a Better Experience

So, how do you know if your transit site is any good? In the first part of our series we talked about the importance of open source - how open data standards combined with an affordable technology platform like Drupal can be a great option for large transit authorities. 

What comes next? Planning the experience.  

Before you can make a great website, the more you know about what your customers want, the better. So, how they are going to use your website, who is using the site, what are pain points, and what is a successful website journey. This is where the importance of user experience (UX) comes into play. 

When partnering with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to build its new site, we first worked together to develop a robust user-testing and validation strategy to ensure that we stayed on the right route. We asked a number of questions relating to issues including access, ridership, and trip planning, and then analyzed responses against a predefined set of internal criteria. 

UX testing was a year-long process that included the build of a minimum viable product (MVP) for beta testing, ongoing solicitation and collection of customer feedback, and several product iterations before the launch of a customer-focused solution.

In the end, VTA has an award-winning, user-focused website, that continues to evolve with features and enhancements that the riders want. 

Hop aboard the knowledge bus! 

If you are really interested in how this all comes together in the backend, I invite you to watch this recording of the lead Drupal developer for the VTA project as he presents an informal technical case study on fueling a transportation site with data and APIs to his local Drupal Users Group Meetup. 

Want to know how we can help with your next web project? Connect with me to learn more, or invite us to bid on your next RFP.