State-of-the-art analysis of Departures App

Departures App

State-of-the-art analysis

The Swiss company Taktil Software have developed an augmented reality app named Departures that visualizes public transportation in an innovative and attractive 3D view. This is the same technology that would be applicable in our project idea and a state-of-the-art analysis of this app is therefore well motivated. The app is currently available in Switzerland, New York City and San Fransisco Bay.

Functionality

The app augments nearest public transportation information onto the camera view of the device. The user can also plot best route to nearest stations using the built-in map.

User interface

The app is composed of two views. The camera view of the surroundings, along with eventual augmented information, and a map view showing nearby stations and best route to chosen destination.

Screenshots of the app

My first impression of the design is that it's simple and easy to understand the presented information. Overall it feels that the app is contained in the sense that it only has a small set of features that does exactly what you'd expect it to do; showing departures. Breaking it down the app shows the following information:

• All public stops/stations
• Departure times for all means of transportation
• Real-time status information, e.g. delays, platform changes etc.
• Built-in map with all above including an arrow and route to a chosen stop/station

The public reception of the app is almost unambiguously positive with multiple design awards and top reviews on apple store.

I find, however, that the view is rather cluttered, since as much information as possible is presented to the user immediately. An alternative that immediately comes to mind is to present the lists as drop down lists that expand when pressed.

The app seems to focus a lot on simplicity and does not offer any settings for customizing the interface (as far as I can tell from the documentation, the app isn't available in Sweden at the moment). Some users might only be interested in a subgroup of the public transportation options, such as only buses for example.

Other suggestions include picking a final destination and instead of showing departures presenting the predicted travel time for the different transportation options, if there are multiple choices that is.

Here is a youtube video with a presentation of the features: video

Summary

All in all the app presents a neat and clean interface to real time departure information of public transportation in an innovative and appealing way. However, there are improvements that can be made with respect to user customizability and design changes that makes the views less cluttered.