Future of Disruptions on PTV Website and App for Victoria.

UI/UX Designs

Future of Disruptions

Summary

Disruptions stand out as a significant pain point for users of the PTV website. Continuous feedback indicates that users struggle with the current presentation of disruption information, finding it challenging to understand, poorly categorized, and occasionally irrelevant to their journeys. There is a recognized need to reassess how disruption information is conveyed on the PTV website. The primary objective is to explore opportunities for making the information clearer, more user-friendly, and targeted, with the potential for scalability to other transport modes in the future.

To do this, we would like to dig further into customer’s behaviour and preferences during disruptions to understand the ideal disruption experience. We have compiled and analysed past research and have an initial understanding about disruption archetypes and key tasks. We are also reviewing current analytics and customer feedback to identify pain points from current disruption experience.

Analysing previous research and data, we created this journey map and defined our scope of this project. We communicated with various stakeholders and finalised our project goal and budget.

Competitive analysis

11 direct and indirect competitors were analysed to understand their features. Outline the common baseline features and mention notable features from particular competitors

Stakeholder Engagement

I facilitated numerous workshops and ideation sessions involving a wide array of stakeholders, including Metro, V/Line, YarraTram, the Wayfinding team, Brand Studio, Customer Service team, Accessibility representatives, LT, backend developers, and many others.

Research plan

The research plan aims to address the prevalent issue of disruptions encountered by users of the PTV website, which have been consistently identified as a significant pain point. The focus lies on enhancing the clarity, relevance, and user-targeting of disruptions information, with potential scalability to other transport modes in the future. Initial insights suggest that user behavior during disruptions tends to be reactionary, categorized into three archetypes: “Ready for News,” “Info Seeker,” and “Turn up and Hope.” However, there is evidence of some proactive planning among commuters, indicating a nuanced approach to disruption management. Key goals include understanding customer behavior and preferences during disruptions, evaluating the effectiveness of current disruption archetypes, assessing information needs and expectations, and identifying strengths and weaknesses of proposed design concepts. By delving into these areas, the research seeks to inform the development of a disruption experience that is more user-centric and fit for purpose, ultimately improving the overall user journey on the PTV website.

Bastion research

Securing a budget, we enlisted external research leadership from Bastion. I took the initiative to develop initial concepts and prototypes tailored for testing among Victorian public transport users. This proactive approach ensured a well-prepared and structured testing phase with valuable insights expected from the external research effort.

Card sorting activity

Our investigation into customer feedback indicates a need to review how disruption messages were organised on the PTV website. In conjunction with the uplift work to Disruptions on the PTV website, the team was conducted a two part card sorting activity to evaluate how customers would sort and categorise various disruptions messages as well as assess the level of impact these disruption messages had in planning a journey.  

Key findings:

Participants sorted disruption messages by transport mode, time frame and disruption type because it formed similarity and seemed logical.
The factors that caused a disruption message to be more impactful was its relevance to the commuter’s journey planning need, the length of time that their journey would be interrupted as well as whether there were alternatives to navigate around the disruption.
The proposed disruption categorises following the study:  Delays, Cancellations, Replacement bus, Service changes, Works and Closures

User testing

This research aims to assess how customers interact with our proposed conceptual design to find and understand disruption information on the PTV website. Our objectives include evaluating if the design improvements make it easier for users to find and comprehend disruption information, recognize significant disruptions impacting their journeys, and differentiate between disruption messages based on their impact levels. This analysis will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the design enhancements compared to the current state, guiding further improvements for a better user experience.

Preferance testing

We redesigned and user-tested several webpages, including the Journey Planner options and details, PTV home page, Disruption home page, Line/Route modal, and Disruption article. The initial round of testing revealed that the new design’s prioritization and bold visuals effectively helped users quickly identify when and what type of disruption was occurring on public transport. However, we found that lesser important disruption information was causing confusion, so we made UI refinements and conducted a preference test to evaluate these changes for the final design.

Guerrilla Testing

Our initiative to refine digital touchpoints on the PTV website aims to enhance the customer experience, particularly in providing clearer and actionable disruption information. Following three rounds of user research involving 81 customers, our proposed design is now ready for implementation, but we recognize the necessity of further feedback from customers during both planned and unplanned disruptions to refine our design. Adopting a guerrilla testing approach at selected transport locations in Melbourne CBD, each session lasting approximately 10 minutes, participants will engage in informal conversations while completing two scenarios on the mobile version of the PTV website. This research aims to evaluate text size, presentation, interaction intuitiveness, and areas needing refinement, considering users’ experiences while commuting and their interactions with digital touchpoints like Passenger Information Displays (PIDs).