Transit UX

On the bus ride home today, I noticed a small poster behind the driver’s seat that announced upcoming changes to the arrival and departure times.

With time to kill, I thought a little about the usability and design of this list. Gripped with this momentary fever of design geekery, I dramatically concluded that it didn’t seem very likely that riders would look at this posted notice of changes nor even be aware of its existence; it would just be too hard to read from just about any seat on the bus unless a rider was sitting right next to it.

So, what’s a design geek to do? With a few free minutes before my stop, I brainstormed … What might be some options for improving usability? Hmmm… Perhaps,

• integrate these announced changes with the digital reader board that is used primarily for announcing the date and time as well as requested stops;
• add a pre-recorded announcement to run every _x_ minutes (the pre-recorded announcement could be customized so that it would be loaded on to the computer/PA systems of only those buses whose schedules were impacted)