Transitland Data Playground

Overview

Transitland Playground allows users to browse and query all the operators, stops, and routes in the data. We wanted to abstract away the queries and technical parts of using a transit feeds database to make it accessible to people from all background and levels of expertise.

The playground has been featured in many transit publications and blogs:

• The Next Stop Toward a Better Transit App - The Citylab (The Atlantic)
• Transitland, towards a more robust open-source transit software stack - Trillium Transit
• Aggregating the world's transit data - Tyler Green

Target users

 

Data flow

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JSON responses vs a friendly interface

The interface made queries more visual.

We used a “Madlibs” pattern for constructing a request.  It was a pattern most people were familiar with and it was easy to understand for everyone irrespective of knowledge of programming.

Visual Design

Process

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Final

Querying interface

Querying for routes, stops and operators by place

Querying for routes, stops and operators by name

Querying for routes, stops and operators by map view

Query data in a table format below the map

 

Demo

 

Talk at State of the Map 2015 in Seattle (with Meghan Hade - lead engineer)

Role - User research, Story mapping, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability testing, Visual design, Front end development