FromHere, an Application for Mobile Public Transport Information

Posted on by

At Design vs Art we have been thinking for some time about how it would be to give users of public transportation the possibility of knowing in a fast way how to get from A to B in an extremly fast way. In this article I would like to give you some insights about the design of the fromhere application.

The Problem to Solve

Our agency is based in Munich, a city with a huge public transport network that takes people everywhere. The problem is that as the travelers get more options the network becomes more complex. Then, is very difficult for people to plan a journey without a computer with access to the online route planning system.

There are several services to check this information through a mobile phone but none takes advantage of the latest technology, like GPS.

The Solution

In the following video you can see a fast introduction to our design.


FromHere Application from Design vs Art on Vimeo.

 

We have been asking users of public transportation about the places they usually go. The answer was that most of them are regularly going to the same places, like work, gym and favorite cafeterias or bars.

So we decided to design an interface as simple as possible that makes the journey planning really fast, wherever the user is but going to those "standard" places. We decided to design our first solution for the iPhone as we realized that tapping on the destination would be the fastest way to do it. 

The Interface

The fromhere interface is clean, it loads fast and eliminates any distraction other applications could have. For us, designing an interface that is fast and easy to use was our main goal. 

The Technology

Thanks to GPS the telephone knows where the user is located. The application then connects to the server to translate coordinates to a real address, such as "Duesseldorfer Strasse 11, Munich".

In the next step the application requests the journey plan between departure and destination to the servers.

Contact Us

Please contact us if you need farther details about the application.

The official fromhere product information website is here: http://www.designvsart.com/fromhere 

Creative Commons

You can use the contents of this article and video under Creative Commons Attributions License 3.0. Just link to http://www.designvsart.com/fromhere

  • http://www.balaji-dutt.name Balaji Dutt

    Hi Alexis,

    Thanks for the feedback about my rant on map apps :)

    Based on what I’ve read of fromhere I’d say the following would be very nice to have:

    1. Live map updating based on GPS: This is more specifically for the case where I enter a new location. Once I get off the bus/train I would be very happy if Fromhere could show me a map that orients itself to the way I’m facing. That would make it a lot easier for me to navigate the last part of the journey.

    2. Recalculate route – If I miss a particular connection, it would be nice to hit a big red button that says “I missed this connection” (0r something like that). Fromhere should then go off and figure out a new plan for the rest of my journey.

    Can’t think of anything else right now. Will post here if I think of something :)

  • http://www.alexisbrion.eu Alexis Brion

    Balaji,

    Thanks a lot for your comment, I do really appreciate it!

    Alex

  • Mona

    Hallo Alexis Brion,

    My name is Mona from Egypt,,I study in computer science and will do mobile application about Transportation project, If you do not have any mind to send to me details about your application of transportation, please i want to know if you face any problem in your application,

    Thanks in advance