A little peace of mind goes a long way when dealing with the safety of your kids. Rest easy knowing that FindThatBus will help you to better manage your day.
Role
- UX/UI Designer
- User Researcher
- Interaction Designer
Tools Used
- Sketch
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Axure RP
The Problem
If you are at the bus stop early, there is no convenient way to determine how long you’ve got to wait before the bus appears, especially if the bus is running behind schedule. On the flip side, if you are late and miss the bus, there is nothing in place to inform you of this, and your child is stuck waiting for a bus that will never come. You’re stuck having to take your child to schoollate to work and risk being .
My Role
I identified a problem that exists in my community and decided to take action. Persona development, competitive analysis, creating user interviews, sketching prototypes, and hi-fi prototypes in Axure were all tools leveraged to create this solution.
My Research
Through user interviews and research, I was able to determine a niche target market for such an app. I proceeded to create a user persona for self-employed single mothers.
After analyzing all the feedback from the user interviews and conducting a competitive analysis I was able to identify a core group of features for such an app.
Effectively capturing the exact location and arrival times for the school bus remained the core solution. However, the feedback also showed that the safety of the child and peace of mind knowing the child arrived safely on the bus and to the school became apparent it was a must-have for the initial release of the app.
55% of public school students ride the bus. Several studies show that if you miss more than 10 percent of school days, your odds of scoring well on tests, graduating high school, and attending college are significantly lower.
Competitive Analysis
After proving the need for such an app, I then proceeded to see if and how other states solved this problem. By combining my findings along with analyzing trends in other niche businesses to being creating flows & sketches.
User Flows & Wireframes
The Result
The final UI for the app was tested in an Axure RP prototype with the parents of my local community. The feedback was great and parents showed a huge interest in the application. The screens below show the main pages of the app and how a typical user may use the mobile app.
What’s Next?
Ongoing surveys and user tests prove that integrating such an app within the school systems will be extremely positive for the community. I’ve also developed a working relationship with the director of communications for the Cobb County school district and together we are planning to release this app district wide – enabling parents the ability to finally have peace of mind that the 112,708 students in our area are safe and making it to school every day.
In the meantime, I am working with school officials on an app for bus drivers to manage their routes to accurately sync data between the parent and bus. Stay tuned!
Success usually comes to those who are too busy looking for it.