Research to Delivery
Real-Time Data UX
WCAG 2.1 Compliance
Information Architecture
Third-Party Integration
Team Management + Leadership
Mobile Design
ROLE
UX Lead, Sensis
Mar 2019 → May 2021
Launch
Feb 2023
KEY METRICS
Information architecture built around rider task
5 interaction systems
WCAG Compliant
GTFS real-time integration
Context
39 routes. One broken digital experience.
39 routes. One broken digital experience.
Foothill Transit operates 39 bus lines connecting the San Gabriel Valley to L.A.'s urban centers, but its legacy website made riders work harder than the commute itself. No real-time data. Navigation built for the agency, not the rider. A digital presence that made public transit feel like a last resort.
MY ROLE
Lead UX, end to end.
At Sensis, I owned UX strategy, information architecture, the full wireframe library, and stakeholder alignment across a two-year engagement, from discovery through handoff.
Design completed May 2021; development and launch followed in February 2023, a realistic picture of large public-sector project timelines.
Challenges
Four problems worth solving.
A full system audit and stakeholder interviews surfaced the gaps between what the site offered and what riders actually needed.
Research
Interviews + field observations
I conducted user interviews and field observations across daily commuters, first-time riders, and riders with disabilities, building a picture of how different people navigate the same 39 routes under very different conditions.
High-level personas.
Experience strategy
Task-first. Always available. Anxiety-reducing.
Each pillar addresses a specific failure in the legacy experience, and a specific user need uncovered in research.
01
Frictionless onboarding
Address first-time rider anxieties before they make a trip decision. Set expectations quickly, surface the tools they need first.
02
Information scaffolding
Dedicated "Bus Basics" content builds rider confidence without burying experienced commuters in instructions they do not need.
03
Real-time responsiveness
Surface live data and planning tools in persistent utility navigation. Riders make decisions in the moment, not from the homepage.
04
Community connection
Showcase Foothill Transit's technology investment to reinforce community trust. The site should feel like a modern service, not a static brochure.
Experience strategy
Built for tasks, not the agency.
The legacy IA organized content around Foothill Transit's internal structure. I rebuilt it around the three things riders actually come to do: plan a trip, find a route, get real-time status.
The legacy IA organized content around Foothill Transit's internal structure. I rebuilt it around the three things riders actually come to do: plan a trip, find a route, get real-time status.
Annotated sitemap utitlity feature detail.
Design decisions
Five decisions that changed the ride.
Onboarding flow
Setting expectations before the first trip
A paginated welcome flow introduces new riders to the site's tools in digestible steps, Trip Planner, real-time tracking, accessibility options, so first-timers arrive at the schedule knowing what to do.
Modal onboarding tooltips and modals.
Geolocation wireframe with annotation and live site design.
Contextual location access
One permission. Fewer repeated steps.
Requesting location access at first visit pre-populates the Trip Planner's origin field on every subsequent use, eliminating the most common source of repeated manual entry for daily commuters.
Trip planner
Always there. Never in the way.
The Trip Planner lives in a persistent sticky footer, accessible from any page without navigating away from content. A streamlined two-step flow offers Metro Planner and Google Maps as output options, respecting rider preference rather than forcing a single routing tool.
Trip planner wireframes with annotation and live site design.
Real-time data integration wireframes, live-data flyout, and bus-locator screen designs.
Real-time data integration
Live data. Human interactions.
GTFS feeds provide raw real-time bus data, position, schedule deviation, service alerts. The design challenge was surfacing that data in interactions that feel like a helpful companion, not a technical dashboard. Alerts, live maps, and schedule updates all live in the sticky utility nav.
GTFS context: General Transit Feed Specification is the open standard for public transit data. Integrating a live GTFS feed means designing for data latency, feed outages, partial data states, and alert prioritization, all of which required explicit design specifications beyond the visual layer.
Accessibility
WCAG 2.1. Not as a checkbox.
Riders with disabilities are a significant share of Foothill Transit's ridership. WCAG 2.1 compliance was not a legal requirement to satisfy at handoff. It was a design constraint that shaped every structural decision: heading hierarchy, keyboard navigation order, contrast ratios, and the onboarding flow for assistive technology users.
Impact
What we delivered
Design deliverables
01
39 Routes
Fully restructured in new IA
02
WCAG 2.1 Compliance
Keyboard nav · contrast · ARIA
03
GTFS Real-Time Integration
Live data UX specified end-to-end
04
5 Interaction Systems
Onboarding · Location · Trip Planner · Alerts · Accessibility
05
2 Routing Options
Metro Planner + Google Maps
06
Mobile-First Responsive
Designed for on-the-go use
Qualitative signals
Stakeholder feedback after launch indicated a measurable reduction in routine customer service call volume, the self-service goal the redesign was explicitly designed to achieve. Rider feedback confirmed the restructured navigation and real-time data tools made the service feel reliable in a way the legacy site never had.
Internal Foothill Transit usage data was not made available to the design team. If you have access to any stakeholder-reported figures post-launch, add them here with attribution.
Reflection
What I took forward
Other projects
