Transporter is a public transit application for the San Francisco Bay Area. It is Ljuba’s final Master’s thesis project that I helped with as part of the User Interface Design course I took during the Spring (INFO 213 is the core HCI course at the School of Information). The main goal was to research how users approach public transit, understand the mental models involved and to build an application which met those needs. We went through the process of interviewing target users, contextual inquiry and low and high fidelity prototypes to arrive at the best possible solution.
During the implementation phase, I built the server-side part (yes, I’m still talentless when it comes to visual and graphic design), while Ljuba built the iPhone app, which in my biased view has turned out to be the best public transit app on any platform. The people who judged the final projects this year seemed to agree since Transporter won the Chen award for the best project in the user centered design track. Version 1 of the application is in the App Store now and it’s free!
Here is a process book that I created as a deliverable for the class if you’re interested in the design process – from idea to working application.
This demo video shows how Transporter works: