After many rounds of ideation and iteration that included individual and collective brainstorming, diary studies, user interviews, a survey, “bodystorming”, user enactments and prototyping, we have finalized our system concept. And of course, most importantly, come up with a name: Bus Cat! For this Milestone we created mockups for the Bus Cat interfaces and recorded a demo video to walk through the key features and scenarios of Bus Cat.
System Concept and High-Level Architecture
Bus Cat is a service that provides users with timely and relevant information about bus arrival times and current location along with casual, community-building entertainment while waiting at the bus. Bus Cat serves the following user needs:
- easily and seamlessly acquiring bus information when it is needed (e.g., when walking up to a bus stop);
- providing useful notifications while waiting at the bus stop (e.g. a notification of a bus delay) and while riding the bus (e.g. a notification of your upcoming stop or the current stop – such notifications are especially of use to visually impaired riders);
- casual and community-building entertainment centered at bus stops.
The fundamental value proposition of Bus Cat can be summarized as follows:
“Bus Cat is your bus commuting companion, keeping you aware of bus arrival times without the need for user intervention, allowing for an anxiety-free commuting experience.
Bus Cat also keeps you entertained at the bus stop and helps you get to know your fellow riders.”
We have designed Bus Cat so it becomes more than just another app on your smartphone (and possibly your smartwatch). Instead, it’s designed to be your daily bus commuting companion, keeping you informed and up to date through subtle and timely notifications, and entertaining you at the bus stop. It can also help build a stronger community among people who use the same bus stop as you do.
The system consists of five major components:
- a smartphone app
- a smartwatch app (optional)
- a network of Bluetooth beacons deployed at all bus stops and on all buses
- the bus’s built-in GPS and cellular connectivity
- a display at the bus stop showing a real-time map of bus locations and game leaderboard
With Bus Cat, a user can receive a notification in various situations:
- their smartphone app can detect they are leaving a predefined region (like their home or workplace) based on the wifi signal during a predefined period of time (during the workday, for example) and prompt them to start a journey based on destinations they have set in the app beforehand (home, work, etc.). The app will then let them know when the bus is arriving.
- the app is integrated with a user’s calendar and can send them a notification based on their current location and the status of the bus they need to take to arrive at an event on time.
- as a user walks up to a bus stop that has been favorited, the app detects the presence of a Bluetooth beacon and then lets the user know how long they have to wait.
- similarly, the Bluetooth beacon on the bus lets the app know the bus has arrived and that the rider is on the bus; once the user is aboard the bus, the app will ask the user if they would like to receive a notification when their stop is coming up or a notification as each bus stop is passed (a particularly important feature for visually-impaired users).
The use of Bluetooth beacons enables us to detect proximity to a bus stop or a bus easily and does so without draining the battery on the smartphone. The optional addition of a smartwatch makes the experience all the more painless and quick (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Bus Cat Smartwatch Notifications
The second major feature of Bus Cat is the social gameplay experience. As users wait at a bus stop, they can play a game that is built-in to the app. The game features, of course, a “bus cat” character, but more importantly the goal is to foster a community centered around the bus stop. The bus stop has a display (Figure 2) which shows the real-time location of buses on a map and a game leaderboard.
Figure 2. Bus Stop Display
The game is only playable by others who use that bus stop. The idea here is to foster competition and perhaps conversation between bus riders at the same bus stop, even if they aren’t using the bus at the same time of day or know each other (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Bus Cat Smartphone Screens
If the game is compelling and the display of the leaderboard on the display encourages competition, we believe users will be more likely to keep using Bus Cat everyday and distinguishes it from other apps targeted at bus commuters. This increased usage enhances the value of the app since the more usage we have, the more crowdsourced data we can draw from to give users an accurate assessment of bus arrival times.
Goals of the Demo
The goals of the demo were twofold: first, to show how our intelligent notification system provides an excellent user experience that requires very little active involvement of the user; and second, to give a sense of how a user might be incentivized to use the app and play the game by seeing the leaderboard on the bus stop display.
The value of ubiquitous computing is its embeddedness in the physical environment and its ability to communicate between devices and sensors and ourselves. Done intelligently, we shouldn’t have to ask a computer to do something for us, it should be able to sense a change in the environment and “push” an experience to the user. We think that the combination of a smartwatch and Bluetooth beacons makes for a compelling, seamless experience for a bus commuter.
We also think that the social gaming aspect to Bus Cat differentiates it from other offerings on the market. A compelling gaming experience can increase the sticky factor for regular users and also draw in new users. Moreover, it can be a topic of conversation among bus riders and a way to strengthen ties between strangers who might nevertheless cross paths with each other several times a week.
A Description of the Demo
We decided to break up the demo into five distinct scenes which fully captured the essence of our product.
Scene 1:
Ron is a frequent user of the product buscat and he uses it daily while he travels using the bus system in Ann Arbor. In scene 1, it has become time for Ron to leave his home for work. The scene opens showing him seated in his living room watching television and on noticing the time, he collects his bag, smartphone and wallet and switches off the television. As he exits the door of his apartment, he gets a notification on his smartwatch which identifies that he has left his home, and asks him if he would like to start a trip. The app then guides him to choosing a particular journey from the preset profiles such as grocery, school, work and so on. Ron chooses work and then proceeds to leave the building.
Scene 2:
Scene 2 starts with Ron approaching the bus stop near his home. Just as he approaches the bus stop, he gets another notification on his watch indicating that the bus which he needs to take is arriving in 4 minutes. He then selects the option to open the buscat app on his smartphone and proceeds to have a look at the screen display which is present at the bus shelter. The display has a game leaderboard in its left half and the right half consists of the maps and timings of the different bus routes that service this bus stop (See Figure 2 above). Ron looks at the leaderboard and is upset that he is in second place. He sits down and takes out his smartphone to begin playing the buscat game. The smartphone directly opens into the Bus Cat game as Ron had selected the option “Open on Phone” on his smartwatch.
Scene 3:
In scene 3, Ron’s friend Sebastian arrives at the bus stop and asks Ron about the game that he is playing. Ron points to the display at the bus stop and encourages Sebastian to go have a look at it. Sebastian has no idea what buscat is. He sees a message which prompts him to scan a QR code to download the application. Sebastian scans the QR code, which then leads him to the website from where he is able to download the buscat application on his phone. On opening the app, it detects his current location and indicates the buses that service the stop and their arrival times. He then selects the route that he wishes to take and the app shows him a map of the route with the real time location of the bus. It also prompts him to start playing the buscat game while he is waiting for the bus to arrive. Sebastian also begins to play buscat.
Scene 4:
Scene 4 shows Ron seated inside the bus. The buscat app sends a notification to his watch asking whether he would like to receive notifications about the bus stops enroute as well as the estimated time of arrival at his destination. As he selects “Yes”, the watch indicates the name of the next stop, number of stops left to destination and estimated time of arrival. After a certain amount of time has passed, Ron gets a notification on his watch telling him that he has arrived at his destination. On reading the notification, he gets up from his seat and proceeds to the door to exit when the bus comes to a halt at the bus stop.
Scene 5:
Scene 5 begins with Ron walking away from the bus stop. The app has identified that his trip has ended and pushes a notification to his watch to indicate that. The notification also asks him to rate the trip. Ron proceeds to give his rating. The next step of the watch prompts Ron to open the app on the phone to give a detailed feedback with any additional comments or grievances. Ron enters some information and continues to walk towards his work place with a smile on his face.
Key Elements captured by the Demo
- The demo was able to clearly highlight two specific use cases. One for a regular user of the app (Ron) and the other for a new user (Sebastian). The experience for both was slightly different. For Ron, all the information was preloaded as per his set profile and prior data and the information was pushed to him based on his movements. The game and the timely notifications would ensure that the new user would want to use the app again and hence he would set up a profile and enter information to avail of the additional services in the future.
- The demo clearly captured the geo-fenced notifications that were being provided to the user as he left his home and arrived at the bus stop.
- Clear notifications to the user about bus arrival times at the bus stop.
- The demo was able to show how the Bus Cat game had completely engaged the user Ron. He was a frequent player of the game and was determined to be at the top of the game leaderboard at that bus stop. It was indicative of the fact that the game was a driving factor of maintaining usage of this app on a regular basis.
Key Elements not captured by the Demo
- The demo does not indicate the process of how the user sets up his profile and different journeys. There is no information regarding what data Ron has had to enter and how that data has been collected and aggregated to provide the timely information to him.
- The product’s location specific notifications around the bus stop and real time location of the buses are calculated using Bluetooth beacons that have been placed on the bus stops and the buses. These beacons are like small stickers and they are vital to getting the location data that is necessary for his product to be accurate and useful. However, these beacons have not been shown or highlighted in the demo.
- The game is a vital part of the experience. The demo is not able to show what kind of game it exactly is. The only context is that the game involves a “bus cat”.
- The demo is circulated around a user who owns a smartwatch and gets most of his notifications on that device. The demo does not indicate that the Bus Cat product can be used to its full capacity by any user with just their smartphone as well. The smartwatch is just an added compatibility for the system to facilitate the needs of that segment of bus rider population. Bus Cat can be effectively used by everyone who owns a smartphone. The information needs of those who don’t even have a smartphone can also be served by the display at bus stop.
Feedback and Insights from the Demo
At the end of the Demo we had a discussion regarding the following questions with our audience:
- How do we combine and balance out the usage of the smartwatch and the smartphone so that we can decide which functions go into the smartwatch app and which ones go into the phone app?
- Why do we use smartwatch as one of our touchpoints? Have we thought about people who don’t have smartwatch?
- How did we leverage the formative study findings to generate some high-level propositions?
- How did we come up with the idea to build a bus stop-based community from what we’d learned from formative studies?
- How to avoid causing disruption to what users are doing or attending to, for example, walking on the street?
- Have you thought about using the system to motivate more people to take a bus out of the sustainability concern?
These question prompted us to think and explain more elaborately about the rationales behind our design proposal, as well as some specific scenarios where the design may need further adjustments.
First, we propose to use smartwatch as a complement to smartphone to send very short prompts and notifications to our users at those points when they leave for the bus or arrive at the bus stop or approach a bus stop while on the bus. With the rapid development of smartwatch technology and the increasing popularity of smartwatches among the public, we foresee that the bus notification system will integrate the smartwatch as one of its touchpoints in the near future in order to provide a less obtrusive and more efficient notification experience for bus riders. Instead of taking out of their smartphones each time they want to check the pushed notifications, bus riders in the future can be signified by a tiny vibration on their wrists and have a quick glance at their smartwatch to take in the most important information at the moment in a few seconds. On the other hand, we still want to use smartphone as our primary touchpoint for users to check real time bus information including bus arrival times, bus route maps, bus delay information; and provide an in-app game that entertains our users during their waiting time. Combined with a game leader board presented on a bus stop display, we aim to cultivate bus stop-centered communities to facilitate more social interactions among fellow bus riders at each bus stop. We haven’t expected to motivate more people to take public transportation via our system, but the gamification experience may be further designed to serve this purpose in the future.
In a systematic and cascading style, we seek to provide seamless services and multiple touchpoint options for users to choose. From the formative study findings, we’ve drawn the conclusion that bus riders seek more accurate real-time bus information and would appreciate to have alternatives to smartphones as the touchpoints of bus information service, such as a display at the bus stop. Leveraging the idea of service design and customer journey map, we conceive a holistic bus information service system starting from the point when users leave their current location till the end of their bus trips. We also take those who don’t own a smartwatch into consideration that the whole notification service can also be fulfilled by the smartphone app; and even for those riders who don’t have a smartphone, the bus stop display will provide all the bus information they need. The necessity of keeping the redundancy across the smartwatch, the smartphone and the bus stop display is to push the limits of technology yet still ensure that our design cover most of our target audience without forcing usage of any particular novel technology. We’ve kept our anticipation of the bus information service in 5 to 10 years within an unprecedented yet predictable scope.
Another thing we do want to pay more attention to is to ensure the notification experience on smartwatch or smartphone is unobtrusive and won’t disrupt users, e.g., it won’t force users to stop and look at the notification while walking on the street. We’ve decided that the prompts will only be pushed right at the moment when users are detected by bluetooth beacons to leave their current location, arrive at a bus stop or sit on a bus. And users can preset their personal profile and frequent bus routes in the smartphone app so as that in the future they can receive notifications pushed to them automatically.