Overcrowded Public Transportation — UX Case Study

Team Blueberries tackled one of San Francisco's most persistent urban frustrations: overcrowded public transit. With Muni serving over 400,000 riders on a typical weekday, peak-hour commutes had become uncomfortable, unreliable, and increasingly off-putting to riders who depended on them most. Our team of four set out to ask a simple question how might we design a better experience for everyday commuters?

We began with research, conducting surveys with 14 riders to understand what mattered most to them. Reliability, live updates, and safety ranked highest, while 28% reported discomfort from overcrowding and 25% cited delays as their biggest barrier. These insights shaped every design decision that followed. Over three iterative sprints learning, testing, and community-driven refinement we designed a mobile app concept centered on real-time crowd reporting, route transparency, and a feedback system that puts riders in control. Each round of usability testing sharpened our thinking: we refined the information hierarchy, improved the crowd-sourcing feedback flow, and tightened the navigation to reduce friction for first-time users.

As Documentation Lead, I was responsible for capturing and communicating the team's process clearly at every stage from research synthesis to design rationale to final presentation. This project deepened my understanding of human-centered design as a practice built on listening, iterating, and always designing with the end user in mind.