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Overview

The MTA’s internal software that is responsible for handling communication between its 6 agencies is old, slow, and temperamental, resulting in delays for its customer base. MTA wants to invest in new software to modernize their employee communications by creating a secure mobile app that turns cellphones into communication hubs keeping employees connected to do their jobs more efficiently.MTA recognizes if it can modernize its software to empower its employees to stay better connected, it can keep the city that never sleeps running a bit more smoothly.

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Challenge / Problem

MTA’s internal software has been facing delays due to their aged communication system, based on that they want to invest in new software to modernize their employee communications by creating a secure mobile app that turns cellphones into communication hubs keeping employees connected to do their jobs more efficiently.The problem below helped to synthesize and understand the user’s needs.

MTA employees need a secure way to access different modes of communication easily at work so that they can complete their field tasks efficiently and respond to communications from coworkers in a timely manner.

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Solution

An app offering automated voice commands with standard communication functions to allow employees to respond while working. The app is simple and easy to use; offering translations, subtitles, and enlarged font options for employees underground.

Design Process

Research / Emphasize

Survey was conducted with 22 participants on Google Forms and a 10 questions interview with 4 participants, all of them worked for transportation, being 3 of them MTA employees.The goal was to define and understand the audience, the current industry, and possible problem statements through research.

Some findings:

• Devices: Our survey showed that 48.8% preferred using laptops. But MTA required we create a mobile app for the solution.

• Communication: 25.6% of the company’s main form of communication was through zoom followed by Slack with 17.9%

Personas

After analyzing all the research collected we create our personas to make sure we developed an app that would work for both on-site and in-office employees.

Creating the app

Each member of the group iterated what they though the app might look like. As a group we reviewed each one of them, and together created a vague idea of how the app might look and how it flow in order to create our user-flows.

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Usability Testing

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Next Steps

• Additional MYRA onboarding testing
• Do more research on how the employees on the field could use this app without problems.
• Build a directory contact page with all contacts from all six agencies.
• Build a secure location sharing features
• More focus on ADA compliance, color, translations and subtitles

Conclusion and Takeaways

• Overall this project was one of the most important projects that I have done until now.
• It taught me a lot about working as a team and how important it is to communicate our thoughts to the team members.
• I’m very grateful for the group that I worked with and how we have grown and learned from each other.

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