WHAT EXACTLY IS THE BORING CO.?
Founded by Elon Musk, The Boring Company is an infrastructure and tunnel construction company currently developing the Loop, a state of the art, efficient and luxurious approach to urban transportation alternative to the 2-D model that is currently in place.
There still exists a disconnect between the public transit access systems currently in place and the user experience, which slows and complicates the process. Our challenge was to reimagine and redesign the user’s public transit experience, full stop, from pick-up to drop-off.
WHERE TO BEGIN?
We needed to focus our attention on a specific city that would have the greatest impact. With the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop model under construction, the Los Angeles network currently in review, we set our sights on Los Angeles.
Role: UI Lead, UX Reseacher
Tools: Figma, Illustrator, Miro, Photoshop, Slack, Trello
Duration: 2-week sprint
A NEW TAKE ON TRANSIT
To get a deeper understanding of what our competitors are offering their users, our group began conducting competitive analysis on four real-time transit apps that included Paris Metro, Moovit, Transit, and CityMapper. In doing this, we found that, contrary to our initial hypothesis, The Boring Company’s Loop tunnels are too unique and innovative projects to pigeonhole in any one of the currently defined categories. This realization led to our discovery that The Boring Co. has more similarities to the airline industry than any of the transit apps we were reviewing in our competitive analysis.
We began to explore our comparative list, starting with rideshare companies, such as Uber and Lyft, but added United Airlines and Divvy, Chicago’s bike share program, to the list. What we learned from our Competitive and Comparative and task analysis:
Seamless purchase process and checkout
Generated suggestions of current location and destination
Interactive map and GPS navigation
Real-time tracking
COMMUTING CONCERNS
Gaining insight into a day in the life of a commuter, we conducted a series of user interviews that focused on the issues Americans face when navigating their cities’ urban transportation systems. From the quantitative and qualitative data we obtained, our key takeaways from the five user interviews included:
Safety & Cleanliness
With safety and cleanliness as major concerns for our female users, they prefer to drive than to use public transit.
Location Inconvenience
The entrance and exit locations of the Los Angeles subway system are inconvenient for its users.
Parking Frustrations
Finding parking in downtown LA is time-consuming, stressful, and expensive.
Simplification & Accuracy
Real-time train and bus tracking need to be simplified and made more accurate.
MEET TRANSIT TAMMY
Transit Tammy is a busy 32-year-old dermatologist commuting in and out of Los Angeles. She leaves for work at 7:30 a.m. to avoid the heavy LA morning traffic. She values her free time and finds it frustrating getting caught in rush hour or when parking seems an impossible feat. On the weekends, when she uses public transit to commute to events around the city, she feels unsafe and dislikes how dirty it can be. She also finds it a hassle when public transit information and schedules are inaccurate or hard to access.
Pain Points
Frustrated by heavy LA traffic
Parking in the city is time-consuming and expensive
Tendencies
Uses technology to help complete tasks
Enjoys apps like Lyft and Uber
Uses public transit when it’s convenient
Needs
A clean, safe commute
An intuitive application
LEAVING THE STATION
Following the creation of our persona, we were able to identify Transit Tammy’s main problem. She needs a hassle-free transit experience to conveniently get from place to place to fit her busy lifestyle.
MAKING HEADWAY
With our users’ frustrations at the forefront of our ideation, we drafted a way to provide a seamless, stress-free Loop pod seat purchasing process.
EARLY ITERATIONS
After shifting our ideas from paper to Figma, we conducted mid-fi usability tests that focused on the steps a user would take to purchase a Loop pod seat, as well as the user’s process in navigating to their chosen departure station. Some major flaws in our design were discovered in the onboarding process, ticket review screen, and pod location features. Here’s what we learned:
Uncertainty of transit option text
Users could not identify the difference between “Single Pod” and “Pod” purchase options.
Unclear visuals for pod tracker
Confusion about the pod tracker graphic, boarding time indicators on either side of the countdown clock as well as what the “5 min until arrival” indicated.
Users felt stuck on the seat selection screen
More information needed to be supplied for them to select their seats and continue the process.
THE LOOK AND FEEL
The Boring’s Company’s branding and website, mainly black and white, deserves an upgrade to more accurately reflect the ingenuity and state of the art appeal that The Boring Co. exemplifies. Not only was our job to reimagine the experience but also to design it. Having familiarity with the success of Tesla’s brand, we knew the design direction we were headed.
We started with a dark UI palette highlighted with yellow, dark gray, and white accents. The mood board of images we saved gravitated towards the roundness of the tunnels as well as the tracks they follow. With a design direction clearly defined, the LA Loop logo was born.
THE LA LOOP LOGO
The LA Loop logo was designed to evoke the sentiments of motion and flow. Its shape conveys feelings of relaxation and ease, which so many of our users found to be significantly lacking in the current urban transportation models. The dark color palette was chosen to signify darkness, and the bright yellow-to-white gradient to suggest, “the light at the end of the tunnel, now inside the tunnel.”
NEARING THE END OF OUR JOURNEY
With our deadline looming, we conducted three hi-fi usability tests. Based on our user interviews, this is what we changed:
Addition of bottom navigation bar for easy, transitional flow between screens
Delay pop-up notification replaced pod countdown clock
Ticket edit screen simplified into a cascading layout
Click image above to experience prototype
ARRIVING AT OUR DESTINATION
The Boring Co.’s project is proof of how differently we all see and experience the world around us. The LA Loop app is not only enhancing the way we travel but they’re also increasing the speed at which we do it. By changing the preconceived notion on urban transit systems, we’re certain that The Boring Company is the new wave of transit travel made easy. What are the next steps for improvement? These is our recommendations:
Expansion of real-time interactive map
Discussion with LA Loop for accurate and up to date pod and scheduling times for real-time updates
Motion animation for slide bars and screen transitions