Transit Delay & Disruption Experience

Design Opportunity

How might we improve communication to employees and customers during service disruptions for a major transit organization?

Quick Facts

Skill Areas

Design Strategy
Design Research
Design Mentorship
Human-Centered Design/ Experience Design
Service Concept Development

Background

My team of designers and management consultants conducted research to identify needs and established a future vision for the customer and employee experience of service delays and disruptions at a major transit organization.

Output

Current state service blueprint
150+ solution concepts
Future state journey map
Implementation roadmap/strategy
Concept wireframes

The Details

Role & Activities

Led user research, ideation, client workshops, and design production.
Planned and led 50+ stakeholder/user interview and observation sessions.
Trained business analysts in conducting contextual inquiry.
Planned and facilitated co-creative workshop for 36 people.
Led team in ideation and synthesis activities and creation of current state journey and blueprint.
Created future state journey and product roadmap.
Oversaw prototype production of two other interaction designers.

Discovery

I led a team of interaction designers and business consultants in using human-centered design to assess employee experience, internal procedures, and customer experience to improve communication breakdowns during mass transit disruptions and delays. I planned and led secondary research and a two day contextual inquiry and interview effort on-site at the client's operations headquarters which we then synthesized into a service blueprint (Image 1).

I also planned and facilitated a full day co-creative workshop with organization leadership and employees to identify customer and employee needs and opportunities and define a strategic vision (see Images 2 and 3 for visuals of the planning process and one of the templates participants used for generating solution ideas). Coming out of the workshop, I led the team in synthesizing 150+ ideas into themes and concepts to carry forward.

Design

Based on the synthesis of the workshop output, I crafted a future state journey in collaboration with a visual designer to illustrate the organization's North Star vision and built a phased roadmap for actionable implementation. I also oversaw the wireframe production of two junior interaction designers for the immediate solutions the client was planning to implement.

Future Directions

We captured 21 solutions in a phased roadmap to guide implementation, along with wireframes, a prototype, and user stories for the digital solution concepts which we passed on to the client's development team.

Image 1: Mapping out the current state blueprint

Image 2: Planning out the workshop agenda

Image 3: Divergent thinking activity for idea generation