The Next Generation of ORCA
Reimagining Seattle Public Transportation
ORCA, Puget Sound’s inter-agency public transit system, has had a stagnant 60% adoption rate for years despite the best efforts of transit agencies. It has been demonstrated in other cities, namely London, that eliminating cash payment can increase the efficiency of public transit by up to 30%. For our project, we took on the challenge of reducing cash payment in Seattle, and increasing the ORCA adoption rate, specifically for event attendees as a type of infrequent rider.
We began by performing user research and usability testing on the TransitGO mobile ticketing application. We identified some key functionality elements that users expect in a mobile transit service, and came to the conclusion that TransitGO mobile ticketing did not meet the needs of our users.
We identified next gen ORCA as the best reasonable solution and dedicated our project to designing the best mobile experience for ORCA users we could based on our research. ORCA pay, our final application, is designed to fit into the next gen ORCA system that is planned to be rolled out in 2021. The introduction of next gen ORCA will allow users to instantly manage several ORCA accounts at once, as well as use their phone as a credential to pay for train, lightrail, bus, streetcar, and water taxi fare.
This is a brief overview of the process and the deliverables created for our 2019 HCDE capstone project. The project was a collaboration of our team, which consisted of:
- myself
- Zoe Escalona (escalona.zoe@gmail.com)
- Ryan Zuzelski (rzuzelski@gmail.com)
- Zach Thomas (zachthomas823@gmail.com)
and our sponsors:
- CoMotion Mobility Innovation Center,
- King County Metro,
- Sound Transit,
- Challenge Seattle,
- Seattle Department of Transportation,
- Washington State Department of Transportation
My primary responsibilities included the application design and the interactive prototype. I also contributed to the planning and implementation phases of the research and evaluation stages of the project as well as the design work for the TransitGO recommendations.
Process
Our process had two major phases that were subdivided into the four main milestones (which themselves are subdivided). The first phase was our Research and Evaluation and the second was our Designs and Recommendations. Both phases and the elements they contain are detailed further on this page.
Phase 1: Research and Evaluation
Research and Evaluation were done simultaneously during our project. This was because we were evaluating the existing TransitGO application and researching the wants and needs of our user group. Milestone 1: Preparation and Milestone 2: Research and Evaluation both contributed to this phase of the project. Milestone 1 contained the initial research and tools we created to do the Research and Evaluation and Milestone 2 contained the findings of the research.
Milestone 1: Preparation
read more here
Field Observation
Competitive Analysis
Heuristic Evaluation
Research and Evaluation Test Kits
Milestone 2: Research and Evaluation
read more here
User Interviews
Usability Testing
Interview Analysis
Affinity Diagramming
Phase 2: Design and Recommendations
We had multiple deliverables for our capstone project. Each deliverable had their own development process that grew from the findings of our research and evaluation.
Three main factors pushed us to shift our focus to next gen ORCA over a redesign of TransitGO. First, next gen ORCA provides more advantages over cash than TransitGO. Second, next gen ORCA provides more of the features that our research found users wanted and needed. Third, next gen ORCA will make TransitGO obsolete. These three points led us as a team to give quick fix design recommendations for TransitGO instead of an in-depth redesign and change our focus to designing a companion app for next gen ORCA.
Milestone 3: TransitGO Ticketing
read more here
Quick Design Fixes
Marketing
Rewards + Incentives
Milestone 4: next gen ORCA
Once we had decided to work on next gen ORCA, we needed to determine what kind of an application would best serve the wants and needs of the user that we found through our research. We eventually settled on a two app system: one payment app and one utility app, so that users who only needed to use utility functions would not be required to enter payment information or create the secure accounts required by payment apps. Separating the payment function from the utility function allowed for more accessibility in both apps while still providing solutions to the requirements of our user group. We designed the payment application that we named ORCApay, and for the utility application because it is already a well-established application with plans to expand to cover most of the utility functions that would be in a Puget Sound Transit Utility app, we decided to recommend a partnership with OneBusAway.
read more here
ORCA pay Design: Features and Functionality
Add and manage multiple ORCA accounts
Review transaction history for individual ORCA accounts
Instantaneously add value to ORCA balance
Edit name and appearance of ORCA accounts
Choose from a range of payment options
Quickly purchase monthly passes
Per-Trip Value suggested from the history of the card
Tap to pay fare with NFC-enabled mobile ORCA account
Link existing ORCA accounts to manage
ORCA pay Interactive Prototype
Presentations
Sponsor Presentations
Mid Project Check-in @ CoMotion
Challenge Seattle Final Presentation
King County Metro Final Presentation
Smashing Ideas Presentation
Capstone Open House
Our final project presentation took place at the 2019 HCDE Open House. This was a joint presentation of all the HCDE bachelors and masters capstone projects from the 2018-2018 academic year. For this presentation we created a poster and business cards with access to the interactive prototype and the promotion video. We also had a phone running the interactive prototype and a laptop running the promotional video for event attendees to try. Additional things we did to bring in more context of our project was having small light rails on the table and wearing the King County Metro vests we were given to wear while conducting our on the ground interviews and usability studies.
I spoke to many open house attendees and judges, giving an elevator pitch version of our process and deliverables, as well answering any questions. All of our efforts for our project and at the open house resulted in our team winning the people’s choice award.
