At the stop
Physical route signage. A map built from zero, because Seattle stops have none.
ResilienceAnxiety Reduction
Case Study
Designing for Transit Resilience: Seattle's Bus System
Seattle bus riders hit a different failure at every stage of a trip. Four prototypes layer physical and digital wayfinding so no stage stands alone.
Timeline
10 weeks
Role
Product Designer, Researcher
Team
2 Product Designers
2 Researchers
Context
MHCI+D program studio
TL;DR
Seattle's bus riders have nothing to look at when the phone fails. We built layers so no single failure strands them.
Seattle's stops have no wayfinding: no maps or cues that tell a rider where they are or where to go. In our benchmark it was the only city where navigating without a phone was effectively impossible.
What I Did + My Impact
Led the physical wayfinding for a city that had none
I designed the stop map from zero and tested what geography riders need without a phone.
Raised the hypothesis that started the project
I brought the GPS and spatial-memory research that framed our first direction, then worked with the team as the findings refined it.
Ran testing across all four prototypes and found the connecting pattern
Designs that broke from conventions riders already knew increased uncertainty.
HIGHLIGHTS
Four prototypes, each targeting a validated failure mode, designed as layers rather than alternatives. Any one of them can fail without stranding the rider.
While waiting
Arrival time accuracy indicator in OneBusAway.
Trust
Onboard
On-bus LED display. Consistent stop-request feedback across a fleet that currently handles it differently on every bus.
Anxiety ReductionTrust
Checking arrival
Bus travel widget. Persistent status on the trip, so riders don't have to keep reopening the app to feel on track.
Anxiety Reduction
Problem
Every city in our benchmark puts a map at the stop. Seattle puts a list.
Seattle's stops have no route maps, no geographic context and no direction indicators. The riders most exposed are new residents, tourists, and anyone without a smartphone, battery or signal.
Competitive Benchmark — Bus Wayfinding Infrastructure
City
Physical signage at stops
Live arrival display
Language support
Navigable without a phone
Berlin
BVG
Route maps at every stop
Real-time at most stops
German + English
Yes
Tokyo
Toei / Keio
Detailed maps at stops
Real-time at stops
JP / EN / ZH / KO
Yes
London
TfL
Spider maps at stops
Countdown displays
English + icons
Yes
New York
MTA
Some stops, varies by borough
Partial coverage
English + Spanish
Mostly navigable
Seattle
King County Metro
Text lists only, no maps
Inconsistent across fleet
English only
No
BerlinBVG
TokyoToei / Keio
LondonTfL
New YorkMTA
SeattleKing County Metro
Based on competitive benchmarking conducted as part of this project's desk research phase.
The most exposed riders are new residents, tourists, and anyone without a smartphone, battery or signal.
"Yesterday my phone was at 12%. [I was] anxious. I don't know this neighborhood, I don't know how many stops I need to go."
- Interview Participant, 2025
Task
Map where Seattle's wayfinding fails, understand why, and identify which interventions would most improve rider confidence and independence. Entering prototyping, I owned the signage and one question: what does a bus stop map need to show for a rider to orient without a phone?
Research
We began with a loop: little information at the stop, so riders lean on the phone, so spatial memory weakens.
The hypothesis built on research I brought to the team: habitual GPS use is associated with a measurable decline in spatial memory (Dahmani & Bohbot, 2020). Seattle gives riders little to navigate by at any point in a trip.
The stop has a text list of routes instead of a map. Metro's sign standards confirmed it's designed that way.
The next stop shares the screen with the route, the time, and 'Stop Requested.' It isn't always there when riders look up.
Riders use the phone from finding the stop to knowing when to get off. That constant reliance is what weakens spatial memory, and it leaves riders stuck when the phone fails.
How we investigated: three methods
01Desk Research
Set the spatial-memory premise and the benchmark gap
Literature review, competitive analysis, government data
02Generative Interviews
Riders described anxiety about losing the phone
8 semi-structured interviews
03Field Research
The critical failure happens before boarding, not on the bus
Independent observation at transit hubs
Riders showed us the pull was anxiety, not habit. Interviews surface what riders remember. Observation shows what they do, including checking their phone every thirty seconds on a route they've taken a hundred times. Both pointed to the same thing: riders check because nothing else confirms they're in the right place.
So the question became: how does a rider stay confident when one touchpoint fails?
The studio timeframe and the way riders already navigate pointed the same way: work with the phone, not against it. Resilience meant layers that cover for each other, with the phone as one of them.
Three failure modes became the selection criteria for every concept:
Resilience
No dependable non-digital fallback when devices fail
Anxiety Reduction
Navigation itself as a source of stress
Trust
Riders have stopped believing arrival times due to inaccuracy
"The signs are so frequently broken... Even when signs work, they typically are not accurate."
- Interview Participant, 2025
Process
The Failure Happens Before You Board.
The failure I focused on was the minute before boarding: finding the right stop, confirming the route, knowing which way you're facing. One participant boarded the wrong bus at the right stop. Google Maps said her bus was a minute away, and the LED display kept cycling between the route number and "fares required."
"…I only see the 'fares required' and I'm like, you know what? Benefit of the doubt, this is probably my bus because it [Google Maps] said my bus is coming in a minute, so I get on it. And then it [once I'm on …] takes a completely different route."
- Interview Participant, 2025
That's a systems failure, not user error. So I built the signage around something every rider already knows: Seattle's water. Neighborhoods here are defined by Lake Union, Puget Sound and Lake Washington, and riders recognize them spatially without knowing an address.
Neighborhoods here are defined by water: Lake Union, Puget Sound, Lake Washington. Riders recognize those spatially without knowing an address, so I built the signage around them.
Testing + Takeaways
Geographic context helped. The map needs another round.
Compared with today's list signage, 3 of 4 participants oriented more easily on the map with neighborhood labels, but it isn't there yet: 2 of 4 still couldn't place themselves on it. It used color to show which way the route runs from the stop, with no legend, so participants couldn't say what the color meant. Even so, 2 of 4 named the next stop correctly. Two participants also saw a version with Seattle's water added. Two is too few to call a result, but it's the version to take into the next round. Text labels with geographic landmarks read immediately in testing, but they weren't tested further, so they're a direction to explore, not a result.
"I like how this map gives more context with the water."
- Signage Testing Participant,
on the water map, 2025
"I would still need my phone to navigate with this map though."
- Signage Testing Participant,
on the control map, 2025
Not a rejection. A diagnosis. Geographic context was the right ingredient. Whether the visual encoding, and color in particular, can carry it is still open: low fidelity couldn't separate poor execution from the wrong encoding.
Under stress, riders reject unfamiliar formats.
Because I tested across all four prototypes, I could see what no single session showed: riders respond to familiar conventions and reject unfamiliar ones, as a stress response rather than a preference. The LED display made it clearest. Stop names are mostly cross-streets that don't fit the screen, and buses handle stop-request feedback differently (a light, a separate screen, or an overwritten stop name), so every bus is a new guessing game.
"What is the difference between estimated and scheduled? Aren't all times just estimates?"
- Evaluative Testing Participant, 2025
Three rules held across all four prototypes:
Geographic context is load-bearing.
Riders need spatial anchors (landmarks, neighborhoods, water) to place themselves. Signage without them isn't a fallback; it's a list.
Familiar format beats added complexity.
Under stress, riders disengage from new conventions. The color system, the icons and the inconsistent LED display all raised uncertainty.
Redundancy is the system, not a hedge.
The widget helps until the battery dies, the LED display until the bus is rerouted, the signage until it's faded. Layers that cover each other are what make it resilient.
These hold beyond Seattle: anchor to context people already have, respect the format they already know, and never let one point of failure break the experience.
Final Product
Each layer covers a moment the others can't.
Four prototypes, each targeting a validated failure mode, designed as layers rather than alternatives. Any one of them can fail without stranding the rider.
At the stop: Physical Route Signage (my design)
A map built around geographic landmarks, so a rider can orient with no phone. Three variants tested; text labels with landmarks are the recommended direction. Seattle stops had no map to improve on, so the starting point was zero.
Anxiety ReductionResilience
While waiting: Arrival Time Accuracy Indicator
A redesigned label in OneBusAway showing how much confidence an arrival estimate deserves. The icon version confused 9 of 9 participants and was set aside; text labels were understood by 6 of 9 when the wording was specific.
Trust
Onboard: In-Bus LED Display
A standardized display with consistent stop-request feedback. The problem was never a missing confirmation state; it's that every bus handles it differently, so riders can't build a mental model that survives the next bus.
Anxiety ReductionTrust
The whole ride: Bus Travel Widget
An iOS widget showing trip status, so riders don't have to keep reopening the app to feel on track. It came from one observation: riders reopen the app not because they need new information, but because closing it means losing visibility.
Anxiety Reduction
Learnings
Next time, I'll start by asking what the rider has left when the technology fails.
Seattle's gap had been framed as a technology problem: better apps, more accurate data, real-time displays. The research showed the foundation was missing. A rider whose phone is dead needs something to look at.
Testing across all four prototypes showed me that findings look isolated one at a time and only show their pattern from above. Next time I'll plan evaluative coverage across the whole system from the start, and decide up front which questions a low-fidelity prototype can answer, so a question like which encoding carries the map doesn't stay open.
If this project continued
Build and test the recommended direction
Higher fidelity would separate execution from encoding, and text labels with landmarks are worth testing alongside it.
Test at a real stop
Every session happened in a quiet room. Responses when late, distracted or low on battery will differ.
Find the "I'd still need my phone" ceiling
Can physical signage ever stand alone, or does it always supplement digital tools?
Next Project
