Subway Design Application

UX Design Sprint . 2021

Problem Space

Design an application for a transportation engineer to design a new subway system for a given city whose main goal is to ensure a physical design that supports the best connection for high-traffic routes during high-peak traffic times.

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Overview

Users and Assumptions

Designed for Transportation Engineers.
A single user uses this application.
User is proficient in understanding visualizations.
Rate of traffic mitigation determines success of a design layout.
Map and related data is pre-loaded.

Defining Scope of Project

With this in mind, I began to define the scope of the project and the topics I would need to cover through my design solution. I identified 3 main areas of focus - Traffic Analysis, Designing Layout and Impact Analysis.

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Research

A Survey of Traffic Data Visualization

IEEE

This paper summarizes the existing visualization techniques to visualize high-traffic datasets that contain multiple variables, of which time and space are most important.

Visualization of Time:

Linear Time
Periodic Time

Visualization of Spatial Properties:

Point based
Trajectory based

Build new subway lines to underserved areas of the city

The Fourth Regional Plan

This case study highlights how proximity to subway stations affect people living in high-density low-income neighborhoods. Understanding this context helps design engineers understand how best to design subway lines that can serve the underserved areas of the city.

How Vignelli’s Design Still Influences NYC’s Subway Maps Today

Medium | Nightingale

Subway maps abstract geographical details to help users navigate the subway with only essential information. Reading this article allowed me to understand the design choices made in subway maps and think of how it can be incorporated in the subway system design application.

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Design

Low-fidelity Mockups

Having a strong understanding of the task the user wishes to accomplish using the application and guided by research, I designed a few low-fidelity mockups to bring my idea to life.

Key Features

Based on the initial exploration, I was able to define the key features and the interaction methods when using this application.

Layering visualizations

Designed in layers, the user can increase or decrease the complexity of the visualizations that best assist them in inferring insights and making decisions.

Grouping Lines and Stops

With grouping of lines and stops, the user gets to develop a sense of hirerachy and also gain easy access to control and edit each of these design elements.

Vis Assistance (Create Mode)

Providing dynamic visualizations such as donut, radial and chord charts in create mode allows the user to focus on region of interest and leaves the guess work out of the design decisions.

Compare Design Layouts

Comparing multiple subway layout designs allows the user to analyze and compare the impact of each design on high-traffic zones.

Interactive Wireframes

Once I finalized the design features, I designed the wireframes that demonstrate the flow of the user when interacting with the application.

Click [here] to interact with the prototype.

Expert Feedback

While I did not have access to a transportation engineer, I sought expert feedback to evaluate my design.

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Design Experts

Data Visualization Designer
Interaction Designer

The experts suggested making the following changes:

High-Fidelity Mockup

Finally, I designed a high-fidelity mockup to depict what the actual application interface would look like.