UX Research at 60 MPH: Measuring the Transit Experience
It’s 7:00 a.m. and I am crammed into a bus packed with commuters. As I try gingerly to prevent my face from rubbing against the armpit of an adjacent passenger, I awkwardly suspend my clipboard over my head and try to take notes on every aspect of the experience. You see, while other passengers are traveling to their offices on this bus, for today the bus IS my office.
So why might you ask am I here? I’m working on my first project as a newly hired User Experience Researcher/Designer at EchoUser, and I am meeting my 3rd transportation study participant for BART and AC Transit.
The purpose of this study was to gain insight, through a series of “ride-along” user experience sessions, into the transit experience issues that are most important to BART and AC Transit customers. Ultimately, we were not only hoping to collect issues and experiences that we observed during participants’ ride-along sessions, but also to prioritize them using our User Experience Magnitude Estimation Technique. Our method would help BART stakeholders to learn about customers’ expectations, as well as compare against perceptions of other transportation services (such as Muni and Caltrain). Finally, we would propose (and discuss) potential service design solutions based on the outcomes of our analysis.
At the start of this particular day, my participant happened to be about 10 minutes late to meet me at her bus stop. Luckily the AC Transit bus was equally late, allowing me to conduct my usual introduction after she arrived:
- Introduce myself, thank the participant for participating, and provide a brief overview of the ride-along study she is about to participate in
- Give a 30 second training exercise which introduces her to how we measure User Experience using Magnitude Estimation ratings
- Expose her to a written example of a poor transportation experience as a reference point for her ratings
- Waiting for the AC bus
- The bus ride itself
- Transferring (or navigating) to BART
- Entering the BART station, passing through the turnstiles (and buying a ticket if needed)
- Riding the BART train
- Exiting the BART station