The client:
128 Business Council is a transportation management company for commuters from the end of select MBTA lines to their workplace. Anyone can ride, but it’s most ideal for employees with companies that have memberships. For member companies, the ride will have a stop right at their offices.
The project:
128 Business Council needed a new website design. Opus Design of Boston developed the existing website, so they came to us knowing that we could help them with an upgrade. Websites need to be updated every couple of years, as the user experience insights, best practices, and available functionality changes. 128 Business Council has a website with a lot of specific functionality, which means it will only be user-friendly if updated often.
Design challenge and approach:
A challenge with this website project was finding a new way to display several tables with important information. Art Director and graphic designer, Ellery, did user testing during the architecture phase to find answers about questions such as:
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- Could the user find information they needed
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- How long did individual tasks take to complete
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- Was the user able to complete the task
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- Did any errors occur
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- How did the user feel about their website experience
This testing was extremely valuable, as there are many different ways people like to see information displayed, depending on how they are looking to use it. For example, when working with bus schedules, most users wanted to see only the bus line they were taking. However, some users wanted the options of seeing all the stops on a bus at one time.
Listening to our client’s users and creating the best experience for them, while solving our client’s challenges, is very important in all of our projects.
While working on this website redesign, as with all our projects, we also considered the ease of maintenance of the website. Our developer Yuriy developed a feature for 128 that allows the client to update their tables with ease, using a simple spreadsheet. The client can now update the spreadsheet and then in one step using the spreadsheet also update the website. What has previously taken multiple steps is now a one and done! It’s important to think through the technical side in any site project, not just the layout of information. Our job is to find out how the client is going to use the website and improve the experience for them as well as the end user.
Another feature that was an upgrade is the use of the paper towel format. In the past, it was understood that users were more comfortable clicking to subpages for additional information, but now with the prevalence of mobile devices, users are accustomed to scrolling. This paper towel format allows users to have all the information, previously found on multiple pages through multiple clicks, on one page. You can easily jump to a section with a click, and then continue scrolling on the page to other related information.
128 Business Council is meeting their users transportation needs and we are happy to help them accomplish this via the web design.
