Commuto

At HackerYou, I was challenged to create an app for public transit. I began my research by identifying the biggest pain points for TTC users and discovered driver discourtesy was one of the top complaints. After posting some discussions on Reddit, many commuters defended drivers' attitudes as they are faced with daily challenges, such as dealing with drunks, drug addicts and scammers, all while attempting to pay attention to Toronto’s hectic traffic to safely deliver passengers to their destinations. On the passenger's side, many people experience daily stress from work and personal lives, and while experiencing a packed commute, these negative emotions often surface.

As part of my research, I went to a streetcar stop near the intersection of Spadina and Queen Street, a busy area, to ask some questions in order to understand more about the rude behavior and harassment problems caused by TTC drivers. The initial reaction of people I approached was hostile in at least 40% of cases. This confirmed some of the insights I uncovered on Reddit, stating that the reason TTC drivers were rude was that passengers were being rude to them first. Every single person I interviewed said they had never been harassed by TTC drivers, and in one case the driver was rude because the person actually was doing something wrong which caused their negative reaction. Another person told me that service really improved in recent years. I started creating some hypothesis:

This experiment was conducted in Stockholm, Sweden. It is not an app but very important for my current research as it deals with positive reinforcement. Cameras that could read car plates and calculate speed rates were placed on a street in Stockholm. If the camera caught a particular car traveling below speed limit they would be automatically inserted into a lottery draw. The money was pulled from others who surpassed the limit and got tickets. The draw would occur and a lucky winner would get a cheque. The experiment was a success and resulted in a 22% reduction in average speed.

Reporting apps use negative reinforcing conditioning as a primary psychological trigger to decrease aggression. It uses the hypothesis "if we create a reporting app that allows commuters to police each other we can reduce harassment" but that never worked. In terms of addressing the discourtesy issue, rating drivers would likely not be effective either. I also discovered that most cases of harassment were solved by other passengers moving the harassed person away from the aggressor. This discovery led me to read about the new field of positive psychology. I framed the design problem as "How might we improve passenger relations by using positivity and encourage people to help each other?" I lived in 3 different countries and TTC has, so far, been the most comfortable/satisfactory experience I ever had. I realized that what I really needed to impact was the negative mindset, enabling a shift to positive.

After documenting the ypothesis and insights found in the discovery phase I came back to my street guerrilla tactic. I printed out some surveys and engaged with people on the street to ask them to fill out these forms. Tip: if you offer financial compensation and say you are a student people are more likely to participate in the survey. I also recruited Reddit users and others students from HackerYou to ensure I had a more diverse population. Here is a summary of the findings:

I started doing a walkthrough of the app by doing phone interviews with Reddit users. Feedback indicated that the solution was interesting but nobody was going to use an app just to help others. Despite having supposedly validated my hypothesis, the app was just not good enough to develop user adoption. I needed more features that were not distracting but useful. Every single person I interviewed flagged privacy and stalkers as a huge concern having their names/photos identifiable. I also needed a more polished design. For that reason I abandoned material design guidelines and started developing my own style, then new design goals:

I started doing a walkthrough of the app by doing phone interviews with Reddit users. Feedback indicated that the solution was interesting but nobody was going to use an app just to help others. Despite having supposedly validated my hypothesis, the app was just not good enough to develop user adoption. To be habit forming I needed more features that were not distracting but also useful.