Lux App

Lux is a transportation app with the focus of building a luxury commuter railway experience. I set out to explore a new horizon in how we can better understand the experience and look beyond a simple voice interface.

Role

UX Research/ Design
Visual Design
Motion Design

Tools

Figma
Adobe Suite | After Effects

Overview

Goal

The goal of this particular project was to identify the users' journey and determine the critical functionalities. I wanted to uncover the experience of what it's like to be in the railway for an extended period of time. This would allow me to understand and improve the journey. My contributions to the design process was to conduct the UX and UI across the key parts of the journey of the project.

Gathering Insights: Since we're working with transportation, I needed insight how trains operate on a daily bases and the considerations so I can relate to the users needs and pains. We can also call this scenario building.
User Journey Map: Conducting a field study would help us understand users in feature exploration or demonstration of pain points in existing systems.
Establishing functionality & Design Rational: Once I understood the pain points and desires of the user, I brainstormed solutions to the experience.
Building the Design System: Finally, I begin the design portion of the project with sketches and wireframes, to the final experience.

Discover

Define

I needed to define the following question; what are users feeling when they're on the railway journey? I wanted to validate the problems by taking the initiative of learning directly from the source. I decided to focus on the railway experience. For example, test driving vehicles is a reliable way to get a feel for variety of potential cars. A test drive will enable you to imagine yourself as the owner of that particular car. One would be able to get first hand experience operating the car.

Analyzing the initial situation, building the relationship between experience and users was my priority when deciding on conducting an ethnographic field study.

I would conduct a field study with the idea of understanding the activities that took place in the user’s context. My ethnographic research encompassed:

Insights into the railway industry, services, and scenario building
Uncovering pain points with direct observation
Natural, real world settings to observe natural, real world behaviors
Understand user’s needs and discover opportunities in context

Gathering Insight

I relied on brainstorming some ideas I had as a Mind Map, informing my process and listing some ideas. The ideas helped me to identify the issues based on the following three variables: Technology, Location, and Types. Once I had the idea of what I should investigate and go in depth about each feature.

Types of Railways

I began my article exploration by learning the different types of railways. From bogies and locomotives, it was important to know the differences of how they operate or provide amenities like sleeper cars or dining options.

There are many different types of trains throughout the world that form an integral part of the transport system so it was important to know the difference between regional and the cultural influences it may have. Once I got a good grasp of the differences, I started my focus on learning about more luxury railways and their qualities.

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Not just rooms on rails- diagrams, formations and layouts of railways and trains are often built differently. The Luxury Train is the concierge service for high end train travel by individuals and small groups. I learned the architectural structure of a luxury railway and amenities like room, as well as private rooms to deluxe suites.

Cruise Train Seven Stars, Japan Often referred to as the world's most luxurious train, Japan's Cruise Train Seven Stars brings old-school luxury to a technologically advanced railway.
Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, Europe is mystical for a reason. Food is sourced along the route, meaning that when you sit down to dinner, there's likely to be lobsters from Brittany, or crisp tomatoes.
Napa Valley Wine Train, California though there are different itineraries, most include a multi-course gourmet meal served in the sophisticated historic railway cars, and some rides include stops and tastings at various wineries.

Scenario Location

I built out a scenario location for our railway experience. Because there were various types of cultural influences depending on regions, I wanted to be as detailed I could be during this experience. Discussing types of trains, there are three main types of passenger trains: long-distance, short-distance, and local commuter trains. I wanted to know how location can impact the experience. I decided to focus on the West Coast of the United States (California - Oregon - Washington).

For this insight I wanted to see the difference in distances and how it could impact the experience. Some experiences could last up to three days, some could last no more than three hours. Some ideas I had in mind were entertainment and environment interaction.
Some honorable mentions: Southern United States (Texas - Louisiana - Florida) East Coast United State (New York)

What amenities do we need to consider when riding for a long period of time compared to too? Moving people from point A to point B in luxury time will differ from point A to D. The sightseeing factor is expected to cater to amenities like select wines, haute cuisine and excursion meals in top-notch restaurants on board. I had to consider what entertainment I could implement to help with the distance of the experience. Example:

Seattle to Portland considered as a short distance trip. Users won't have much time to explore the entire experience.
Seattle to Sacramento considered as a long distance trip. This trip could last a few hours or days.
Seattle to San Diego considered as a very long distance trip. Users will engage in every experience in the journey.

New Tech Inspirations

I conducted research regarding innovative technologies for insights about connectivity solutions. Some of the key technologies I wanted to focus on, which works as a focal point of all the modern automotive systems. I centered on the demand for luxurious, safe, and smart interaction to provide a combination of entertainment and information.

Some ideas I had during this research insight was, how we can integrate smart wearable technology to the experience? Wouldn't it be fascinating to have your smart watch as your boarding ticket or a way to earn points while exploring the scene.

Augmented Reality Glasses Imagine you walking into the railway with directions to your suite ready to go while listening to your favorite playlist
Wearable interaction Operate your smart wearables to interact with railway
Touchscreen Room Display Interact with your room with the touch of a finger
Smart System Control in your hands at all times
Smartphone Pairing Don't worry about pairing, once your in the room your ready

Preparing the Interviews

Revealing the challenges people deal with, I needed to see how people would interact with their environments or existing tools. I wanted to observe behavioral cues to discover where technology might help for a better, more effective design experience. For a direct observation I also had to inform the participles of my presence. However, there are both ethical and practical limits to incognito observation. So when it comes to suite room experience, I'll be conducting a survey after the experience is over to record the missing pieces.

The first challenge is going to be finding the appropriate people to study. Defining your research goals, I wanted to add variety to the experience; so I determined the best types of participants to recruit by considering target audiences by criteria like psychographics, behaviors, demographics, and geographics.

Group A James & Lynn (Couple) Residing from San Diego, older Caucasian & Asian
Group B Rango (Single) Residing from Seattle, young Indonesian
Group C Diana & Sam (Couple) Residing from Sacramento, young mix couple

In the case of distance, I decided to focus on three separate location points. This would give me more context based on location demography. I would separate each group into different starting points, two groups focused on long distance and another on a short trip.

Group A Will be on the longer destination point from San Diego to Seattle, the group will spend a few days on board experiencing the full railway.
Group B Will be on the shorter destination point from Seattle to Portland. This group will be focused on how they arrived on the railway.
Group C Will be the long destination point from Sacramento to Seattle.

Prioritize

Research Findings

Once I identified the key points of creating value. I came to conclusion of the users experience would be:
‍Pain Points: The main pain point where users would consistently experience a lack of direction, fail to communicate a clear experience. On the spectrum, users felt overwhelmed by the clutter. As soon as a user priced a ticket, there was no clear direction of what to do next besides boarding time and I saw this pattern from the boarding entrance to finding the suite to figuring out what time anything would happen. What's the difference between an Amtrak and a luxury railway experience?
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‍Desirability: Participants stated that their connectivity services like navigation, internet connectivity and smartphone integration would consist of lost signal depending on their location on the railway, they would like to somehow to sync their smartphone to the experience.
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‍Engagement: Participants also mentioned they were looking to engage more with the entertainment and desire to have choices in activities at the apparent time.

After collecting the data from the research, it was important to communicate the results of my research. Based on 5 participants (3 groups), in 3 cities. I would conduct an affinity mapping to alleviate the pains identified.

The affinity diagram would help construct a relationship between various observations from the field studies and organize them into actionable groupings. I sorted the groups by color; Group A green, Group B yellow, and Group C blue.

Defining the Functionality

Defining the overall experience, I blueprinted the functionalities as a way to have a streamlined focus of the elements for the app. My idea was to communicate the user needs, and component its design and functionality that should be tailored to meet that need. Before adding a new functionality to the app, I had to consider whether or not it’s an essential one. Does it improve the overall experience? Is it a feature that users have asked to see incorporated in future iterations?

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User Journey Map

Based on the research I define the user journey map to identify key points of the experience. Using first-hand observation I explain key moments of the experience.

Sketch

Redefining the experience

Refining the experience, I conceptualize the connection between the experience and the app. My focus was about how the user will use the app during their journey. I started sketching the journey of the app, from the download to the next trip. I had to take in consideration of the interaction between smartphone functionality and AR.

Group A Will be on the longer destination point from San Diego to Seattle, the group will spend a few days on board experiencing the full railway.
Group B Will be on the shorter destination point from Seattle to Portland. This group will be focused on how they arrived on the railway.
Group C Will be the long destination point from Sacramento to Seattle.

Wireframe

Renders

Interface Process

Looking for inspiration in the visual process, I choose to focus with a minimalist approach with a blend of luxury. Easy on the eyes and a balance of clean colors, the principle was to place users in control of the interface.

During the course of the project, I found some inspiration in varies area including music instruments to cars. What inspired me in this areas were how users would interact with the pattern and knowing where to go

Inspirations and mood:

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Utilizes dragging Interaction

With the smart system, the app has a simple UI with a low learning curve while executing a dragging interaction design. The most important aspects of the smart system app are:

Design Iteration- Explore

The home screen is where users can explore options. The app consist of two experiences; exploring new destinations and a smart suite system. Visually, the app has a dark theme that feels modern and high-tech. I allowed users to switch to a more simpler grid view for more content building like slideshows or videos.

Accessibility Give the users the ability to make changes. If the app makes them spend more time tweaking the temperatures, then it's not as useful than manually adjusting.
Sense of Control Relating to accessibility, giving the opportunity to the users to change anything in their suite will give them the peace of mind.
Productivity Comparing how easy it is to retrieve information, we know users don't want to spend more time than they want to.