A User Experience Designer
Prairie Transit Co.
Project Overview
Prairie Transit Corporation is a fictional bus transit company that allows travellers to browse for bus routes and book bus tickets for travel within Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
The proposed website makes it easy for users to book tickets by merely entering the starting point and the destination for their travel, regardless of the province that the starting point and the destination are located in. It does so by suggesting travel itineraries, including connecting buses. I was the sole UX designer on this college project.
Problem Statement
Project Goals
Our team was required to explore and understand the experience of passive job seekers, identify design issues with the Workforce Windsor Essex website and propose design recommendations as well as a prototype for the new website to be built for the City of Kingston. The team was also expected to suggest possible names for the site (Workpool is a title for the website that was suggested by the team).
The project goals
Research Methods
I began the research by outlining the persona that potentially may use the website and followed it by conducting a comparative assessment to get a deeper understanding of the competitors in the market. Based on the outcome of this analysis, I started thinking about the Information Architecture (IA) of the PTC website and conceptualized a sitemap. To validate the IA design, I then proceeded to carry out 2 card sort tests and a tree test. The summation of this led me to design a prototype for the website.
The research methods
1. Persona
It was essential for me to define a set of personas that would use the proposed website. The attributes of the defined persona helped inform specific decisions that I made in the project. The persona that I worked with were:
-
Workers of 30 to 45 years of age who commute between Edmonton to Calgary (or similarly close cities) regularly.
-
Workers/Retirees/Tourists who are looking for a vacation and want to explore cities in the three provinces.
-
Travellers of older age (60 and above) who want to visit their family.
The PTC website was to be created from scratch, so a comparative assessment was a vital part of the research process. I chose the following as my competitors based on its area of operation and the services that it provided.
Competitors for competitive analysis
As part of the comparative assessment process, I decided to evaluate three aspects of the competitors' websites. These were as follows:
-
Visual Design
-
Information Architecture
-
Features on the website
These criteria allowed me to have a comprehensive view of what is currently available in the market for the users.
3. Sitemap
I wanted to use a site map in my process as part of the comparative assessment to understand the IA of the competitors.
The first step was to create an initial sitemap of the PTC website based on my best assumptions of users' mental models and comparative assessment.
4. Testing
Card sort: Using tools provided by Optimal Workshop, I conducted a Card Sort with 3 participants to test how the assumed IA structure and category/item labels put forward are perceived and understood by participants.
Results showed that participants generally agreed to the proposed IA barring some exceptions, as seen in the table below.
Card sort results
Tree test: After conducting a card sort and making informed changes to the original IA design to produce an updated design, I conducted a tree test to validate parts of this design. I conducted 2 tree tests, with 3 participants in each test. The test had the following tasks -
Task 1 – “Please find the page that would list all the movies available on the bus during the trip.”
Task 2 – “Find general information about the town 'Saskatoon.'”
Task 3 – “You have heard that a lot of your friends travel from Thompson to Winnipeg via the Prairie transit bus service. Find information about the bus journey from Thompson to Winnipeg.”
Based on the results of the first tree test, I found that all participants who had trouble finishing task 3 were not familiar with Canadian geography and were unaware of the province that the 'Thompson to Winnipeg' route would belong to. Due to the nature and timeframe of the project, I didn’t have the opportunity to conduct testing with participants that matched my persona requirements.
This issue would be solved on the website as province titles are mere categories to group menu items. Hovering over the appropriate top-level category would show a comprehensive list of all sub-categories and menu items, which would help make up for the lack of users' knowledge about the above.
​
To validate some of the other parts of my IA design, I conducted another tree test. I included the following tasks:
Task 1 – “Where would you find details about ticket cancellations and
charges?”
Task 2 – “Where would you find information about eBuses run by the
company?”
Task 3 – “You want to apply for a job at this company. Where would you find
information about recruitment?”
These tasks were quite easily performed with high scores.
After conducting the card sort and tree tests, I made changes to address the issues that came out in the results. The amended sitemap is shown below.
Initially proposed sitemap - Prairie Transit Co.
Design Proposal
Wireframe
After contemplating the research phase, I created low-fidelity wireframe mock-ups using Adobe Photoshop, which set the foundation of the high-fidelity prototype design that I created later.
Wireframe (Homepage) - Prairie Transit Co.
Prototype
On the basis of all my research and wireframe design, I created high-fidelity prototypes to represent a series of screens for the PTC website. You can access the prototype here:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/b48da775-6c78-4eed-7d17-426f2f0275ae-c2bc/?fullscreen
Key Learnings
Next Steps
If I had a chance to revisit this project (as the scope of this assignment was limited) in the future, I would consider the following:
​
-
Usability Test: Test and validate the proposed design and make any necessary changes as a result of it.
-
Heuristic Analysis: Ensure that the features on the website are technically sound and accessible.
-
Development: The final step would be to hand it off to the development team to execute the design.
Key Learnings
This project was extremely challenging due to its time frame. Having said that, it helped me understand the importance of testing. Based on the initial persona and competitor research, I was able to form the structure, features and functionality of the Prairie Transit website. With the support of the card sort and tree tests, I was able to define and validate the Information Architecture of the website which made me more confident about its usability.