In Transit

Communicating Design with Jason Santa Maria

For their final projects, students were asked to identify a problem within New York City’s subway system and to design a solution that addressed the problem. Students researched the system in depth, including a class trip to the New York City Transit Museum, and addressed a variety of problems ranging from learning the subway system to keeping track of how much time is spent in the system overall.

• Katie Koch : A Plan for the MTA Arts for Transit Program

  

  The New York City subway is filled with artwork and music, but few of the system’s riders are aware of its official Arts for Transit program. I wanted to address this disconnect in my final project. After reviewing the Arts for Transit’s existing touchpoints I wanted to provide a better way for riders to connect with the musicians and artists involved with the program.

  I proposed to implement a system with new, larger, less formal signage, which includes a five-digit text message number and keywords to allow riders to find more information about the artwork they see during their commutes. The second component to the system is a new website that allows subway riders to easily access the wealth of informaiton, images and sound clips available for Arts for Transit artists and musicians.

  See the live prototype.

• Stephanie Aaron : MetroCard Machine Redesign

  

  This redesign makes the use of the machine faster and easier by reducing the number screens to be negotiated, clarifying language, moving popular choices up to the first screen, and streamlining the button design. The new interface makes buying a card twice as fast.

• Kristin Graefe : Near Bus Application

  

  This application uses GPS to locate the user and suggest the shortest way to his/her desired destination.It gives information about the total trip time, walking directions and comes with a fully manhatten bus map that will locate the user during the bus ride. A alarm clock can be set in order to give the user an easy feedback when to get off the bus.

  This application makes it easy to plan a bus trip in New York City.

• Gene Lu : PlatInform

  

  PlatInform is an intelligent platform that informs subway riders where the most empty train cars are prior to the train pulling into the station. There are 10 light bars built into each subway platform, each bar corresponding to each car. When the train leaves it’s current station, it calculates the number of people in each car through sensors and passes this data on to the next station where the emptiest cars’ corresponding light bars would light up. With PlatInform, commuters will no longer have to scramble to find an empty car once the train arrives at their stop.

• Russ Maschmeyer : Redirect, NYC Subway Signage

  

  We can all agree that the service interruption fliers found in New York’s Subways are terrible. For any transit system experiencing redirects, there are four key messages that need to be conveyed: alert the riders to a change, provide a quick overview of that change, course correct any wayward travelers, and finally, guide riders through the hallways to the proper platforms. Currently, the MTA employs a single, densely packed sheet of 8.5x11” paper to convey an entire set of messaging. This is a problem worth solving.

  I approached this problem with the aim to stretch out that messaging over the rider’s entire subway experience, from entering the station, to the turnstiles, to the platform and then onto the train itself. I devised a simple hack to the current station entrance and turnstile signage involving LEDs surrounding the train symbols, as well as the LED route boards on the new R160 trains, which would alert riders to service changes and cancellations. Once inside the station or on the platform during a transfer, riders would find redesigned fliers, which would include iconography, a strong information hierarchy, and a map of the service change. This is of course just a beginning, but hopefully these small changes would go a long way to making these changes a bit more digestible.

• Beatriz Vizcaino : Subtrack

  

  Subtrack is a subway tracking system designed for NYC subway users. The system proposes a change in the actual subway system that would enable metro cards with RFID tags and trains and stations with RFID readers; the system will track the times and stations or trains the user is utilizing in an exact time and date. Accessing the iphone app or website allows the user to visualize information related to his subway usage, such as time spent in a specific train, delays, and waiting times.

• Evinn Quinn : TrainSpy

  

  Train Spy is an application ecosystem that I developed for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Train Spy utilizes technological advancements with Radio Frequency Identification (R. F. I. D.) and the uniqueness of the IPhone platform to offer a, to the minute, real time subway monitoring system. With the R. F. I. D. keeping track of any trains position, the IPhone allows you to view this information and plan accordingly. Not only does the IPhone application exist for mobile user, but there is also an in-station viewer installed in every station on the subway system that allows for non-mobile users to take advantage of the system.