MARTA Ticket Kiosk

Despite its growing population and business presence, Atlanta is lagging behind other major U.S. cities in terms of public transit. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 4.3% of Atlantans use public transit to get to and from their jobs every day - that's compared to 31% of New Yorkers, 16.5% of San Franciscans, and 14% of D.C. residents (view U.S. Census Bureau data here).

Low ridership statistics means that for over 95% of Atlanta residents, MARTA trips are likely sporadic at best. As a result, these infrequent users must struggle through the process of buying a ticket or reloading a card, using an interface that is not familiar to them. If using MARTA seems like too much of a hassle, they may simply choose to drive. My goal in redesigning the MARTA Breeze Card kiosk interface was to improve the user experience for infrequent riders (as well as frequent ones), by making the interface more intuitive for everyone.

Research

I started the redesign process by watching users struggle with the old interface for a few hours. No one gave up completely while trying to complete given tasks, but I did see frequent use of the "Back" button. The biggest issues in the interface were redundancy and inconsistency, which were compounded by arbitrary, poorly-labeled buttons. For example: according to this study, less than 10% of MARTA riders choose to add a cash balance to their Breeze Cards - most people prefer to purchase 7-day or 30-day passes. However, one of the most prominent options on the home screen is "Add Cash Value". In order to access any other options related to reloading a Breeze Card, users must press the "MARTA" button. While conducting my own research, I found that users were confused about the labeling of the "MARTA" button, and only ever pressed it as a last resort, or by process of elimination.

One other issue that users experienced was confusion over the "Regional Partner" buttons. These buttons, labeled "Cobb Community Transit", "Gwinnett County Transit", and "GRTA", are specifically for users from Cobb County, Gwinnett County, and areas serviced by the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority. These areas have their own public transit systems that integrate with MARTA. However, for people who do not use these regional partners, these buttons are confusing and overly prominent. One of my goals in redesigning the kiosk interface was creating a clear hierarchy of information on the home screen, such that regional partners were easy to find for users who needed them, but easy to ignore for users for whom they were not relevant.

Ideating

As I began experimenting with home screen designs, I focused on three basic buckets, into which the majority of users' needs would fall:

  1. Buying a Breeze Card/Ticket
  2. Reloading or checking the balance on an old Breeze Card
  3. Using one of MARTA's regional partners

I also took into consideration the need for language selection (MARTA's kiosks can be used in Spanish as well as English), and an Information/Help screen.

Prototyping & Testing

After sketching dozens of ideas, I picked two very distinct design concepts and created clickable wireframe-like prototypes using Justinmind. I tested both concepts with seven different users, asking them to perform three different tasks:

  1. Check the balance on a Breeze Card.
  2. Add $1 to a Breeze Card.
  3. Add 1 trip to a Breeze Card, but then cancel the transaction.

I observed as they completed each task, and then asked them questions such as "which task was the most difficult on each interface?" and "which interface did you prefer?"

After conducting a round of testing, I realized that directly comparing the two interfaces was giving me skewed data - six out of my seven users preferred the interface that they had tested second. Because users were still learning how the simulation worked on the first interface, they found the second interface to be easier to use, simply because it came second. Because of this bias, I paid much more attention to qualitative feedback about specific features of each interface, and gave less concern to quantitative feedback that compared the two.

Each of my interfaces had some successes and some failures. On Prototype B, users liked the ability to reload the Breeze Card directly from the "Check Balance" screen. However, I got far more positive feedback for Prototype A's "Cancel" button than I did for Prototype B's more ambiguous "Return Home" button. Feedback on the placement of the "Regional Partners" buttons was mixed - however, no one got tripped up by them when testing either prototype, so clearly chunking them together and separating them from the other options was effective. Feedback on aesthetics was also inconclusive. Several users commented that A was more attractive; however, the users that preferred B said that it was more usable.

Final Design

After synthesizing feedback from my first round of user testing, I began creating a higher fidelity mockup, incorporating the color scheme of the MARTA brand. I looked to MARTA's style guide and website for guidance in order to create a simple, inviting UI. I used bright blocks of color to draw users' attention to important elements, and attempted to reduce the amount of visual clutter on each screen by leaving out elements that were not relevant to users' goals.

After creating an interactive prototype, I did another round of user testing, which helped me find remaining issues with the new interface. Compared to the user tests of the original MARTA kiosk, there was far less overall confusion, and multiple users described the tasks they completed as "very easy".