For international riders, finding the right bus in bilingual Helsinki can be difficult. Once on the bus, they also struggle with locating their stops.

Restructuring how journey data is shown will help riders find their buses more easily. A more intentional journey experience will also increase HSL app users and engagement beyond just ticketing.

Riders found their buses more easily and with less stress. The project was picked up by Helsinki Public Transit is currently under implementation.

Helsinki is planning to substantially invest in public transit to make car ownership unnecessary by 2050. This requires seamless transit experiences for everyone, including internationals.

I talked to riders and had them navigate to an unknown destination to uncover gaps in the existing experience.

To gain additional insights, I mapped the entire service journey, analyzed the HSL app and studied other Nordic transit systems on-site.

The lack of clear bus and stop information left riders uncertain about which bus to take. Riders frequently checked their phones mid-journey to avoid missing their stop.

While HSL’s app has rich journey data, much of it is hidden or spread across different sections.

I explored various options for different stages of the journey experience and used user testing as feedback to supplement lack of design team.

Throughout, I constantly reassessed the product thinking and broke down the product into actionable steps.

An entirely new experience to navigate to your bus and keep an easy overview over the journey. It also includes travel notifications at key points to reduce stress.

The flow also comes with a detailed product breakdown to guide HSL’s implementation efforts.

I created detailed documentation of my research, explorations, final designs and the product breakdown to hand off to HSL.

Product design inspired by service design helps to create experiences within complex environments.

Breaking down a product, managing scope and understanding design processes from outside the team.