Commute project

Commute

Problem: Navigating within a new city is unpredictable.

Solution: Customized information about travel times and distances within an unfamiliar city.

Research: Traveling to and from work, school, home, or attractions can be time consuming and confusing. Following an itinerary is important as a visitor exploring a new city. Time needed to travel from one attraction to the next can affect the overall itinerary. Relocating to a new city choosing a home is important. It’s location will affect the regular commute to a job or school.

Research

82% of North Americans live in urban areas and are increasingly concentrating in mid-sized and large cities. In 2010 41 urban areas in the United States housed more than 1 million people, up from 12 areas in 1950 and projected to grow to 53 by 2030.

Commute 1
Karen is 20 years old, She is studying to be a rocket scientist, or studying to be one at Columbia University. She lives in Greenpoint with her boyfriend. Karen was born in Peru and lived in Florida before moving to New York to study. She loves the outdoors and has a cat who hates dogs with a passion. Her Commute from Greenpoint, Brooklyn to Manhattan’s upper west side for classes at Columbia University is a long commute. She then goes to Williamsburg, Brooklyn for work.
Commute 3
Karen is looking for a new place to live. Her challenge is, to find something reasonably priced that’s also convenient due to her commute and late nights at work. She lives and works in Williamsburg Brooklyn and commutes daily to Columbia University in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She works late at a restaurant and a shorter commute would give her much of her day back for resting, studying or socializing.
User Journey
Commute 2
Karen’s day begins with her getting ready for school and preparations depends on if she’s going to work that night. She leaves home, takes a bus and two trains to the upper west side and her classes. After her classes she may take the subway to Williamsburg or somewhere to have dinner with her friends. Either way most nights she is coming home later in the evening. She has full days
User Flow
Commute 4
Which brings me to my concept. A tool to help quickly display information based on convenience for one’s life. To make it easy to figure out the areas in which areas of daily and frequent visits are faster or easier. Setting locations like home, work, school and other frequented locations will allow the application to show the user areas of easy access through public or personal transportation in one view. Signing up to be able to manage locations is part of the process. Selecting locations or set up an alarm clock for daily commutes is possible, with possible access to traffic and public transportation changes, this could be very useful on a daily basis. There is additional possibilities of layering information like home rental availability, restaurants, social events and shared transportation give the user an overlook of commute times with an alarm to make a specified arrival time.

App Wireframes
Commute 5
We start by creating a list of frequented locations
Commute 6
Lists of locations can quickly be checked or unchecked.
Commute 7
Add points of interests like restaurants, museums to show, including preferences for commute type. Advanced settings can further focus results based on specific criteria.
Commute 8
The result offers a heat map option for an easy overview of travel times over the area between chosen locations, with points of interest pin pointed with details like restaurant name, type and/or rental cost, size, etc.
Commute 9
Travel route planning without the heat map but keeping the points of interest along the route given.
Commute 10
Route details in text
Commute 11
Points of interest details can be listed and saved. Links to businesses and listings available throughout.
Commute 12
Side bar is always in each screen that offers toggles for map overlays and options for existing list of locations, settings, search and log out options.

Conclusion

Providing people new to a city the information needed for their daily travels will affect their decisions in creating an itinerary or permanent residence and employment. With an overview of rental prices or attractions and restaurant information it is quite useful to also use on a daily basis.