07.10.2019
3 min read
By John Skinner in Design & build
A new site with innovative user experience for Sanders Coaches
A key component of Candour's ethos is to bring the client into our team. For us, the design team encompasses not only our designers, developers and digital marketers but also our clients and their users too.
Good user experience should be at the heart of any digital strategy. It simply isn't adequate to consider these skillsets as divisible any more – successful digital solutions require an integrated approach and individual disciplines can't just be individually bolted on at various stages in the process.
We take a flexible approach to who needs to be part of the design team for any specific task depending on the requirements at hand.
Small screens and inflexible tables
The problem for displaying timetable data in wide tables is that these are incredibly frustrating to view on mobile devices. Pinching and zooming and lots of sideways scrolling is the traditional approach. Advances have been made in responsive tables recently but it still feels as though we are trying to crowbar an outdated design pattern into modern devices.
We decided to completely throw out the existing rules and work from a blank sheet of paper. It was clear that there were opportunities afforded by interactivity that are not available on printed timetables and that we shouldn't simply look to cram these into a screen interface.
Rapid prototyping
This was a design problem that wasn't going to be solved purely on paper on in static visuals. We iterated quickly with paper prototypes with Sanders Coaches themselves and then moved into basic HTML prototypes that allowed us to progress rapidly towards a fully-realised solution.
The working prototypes allowed for rounds of informal user testing and feedback.
The resulting product allows users to quickly drill down to the information that is relevant to them. The surrounding clutter of irrelevant journeys is stripped away, allowing them to choose times according to either an 'arrive by' or 'leave at' perspective from each stop along the route.
Routes are also reversible and users can easily see how times are affected on the weekends or at times where routes are affected at school times.
The individual timetables are supported by a new interactive route map. Further development will include advanced multi-route planning and bus-tracking.
The team at Sanders Coaches has been an absolute delight to work with and we are very grateful for their energy and enthusiasm throughout the process.
