May Mobility
May Mobility: Field Research on Indianapolis Service
THE SITUATION
May Mobility is a platform agnostic public transportation company with service in a number of locations across the United States and also in Japan. In 2022, they collaborated with Toyota Mobility Foundation in order to establish a new route in Indianapolis. It was a great opportunity for May and Toyota to learn more about autonomy in a city with residents from a wide range of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.
After a month of service, I went to Indianapolis to conduct our first round of research. Before I left for this research, I worked with the Product Manager to identify the business questions that need to be addressed regarding this service. His biggest concern was that our ridership numbers were low, and he wondered what was driving those numbers.
BUSINESS GOALS AND QUESTIONS
Learning more about the requirements for our long-term goal of fully autonomous service
What are our Autonomous Vehicle Operators doing now, what can we learn from that, and how might it inform future service?
How do riders establish trust in autonomous public public transit service?
What are Indianapolis rider and non-rider perceptions of autonomous transit now?
Learning more about the strengths and weaknesses of our current route
What kind of research should we do before establishing a route? What might that playbook look like?
How do people choose their transportation in Indianapolis?
How (or are) they learning about our service?
Understand rider satisfaction with our service
What are current areas of success or failure?
How might we improve service and rider satisfaction?
Trying out our service with one of our Autonomous Vehicle Operators!
METHODS
From the business goals and questions I outlined a plan for research:
Part I: Research in Indianapolis
Interviews with site staff and Autonomous Vehicle Operators
Intercept interviews with riders post-ride to capture feedback on service
Intercept interviews with non-riders along our route
Part II: Post Site Visit Long-Form Remote Interviews with Riders
Riders volunteered through a QR code survey located in the vehicle
May’s Lexus shuttle in Indianapolis
IN THE FIELD: TWO PERSONAS EMERGE
I learned from intercept interviews with non-riders who use public transit (at a bus stop across the street from our stop, and at a hospital on our route) that although they saw our vehicles and in some cases walked past our sign every day, they were not aware of our service. Non-riders thought the vehicles were connected to the University and were “doing testing,” or they thought it was a service only for students. Many assumed the vehicles were doing Google mapping; others thought it was probably something related to Uber or Lyft.
Intercept interviews with riders in the field proved challenging because ridership numbers were low, so I pivoted to long-form interviews drawn from riders who volunteered through our QR code.
Those interviews revealed a completely different picture, of students and young residents at the local hospital discovering our service through a wide range of touch points.
PERSONA JOURNEY MAPS
Detail of journey map showing different possible points of discovery
Journey Map for our Persona who is not discovering our service, in spite of the many possible points of discovery
Detail of Journey Map for college student persona who uses many touchpoints as he discovers May’s service
DISCOVERY WORKSHOP
After I compiled the research and completed the journey maps that highlighted the challenges we are facing regarding service discovery for this persona, I organized a remote workshop with relevant stakeholders at May
I walked them through the research and outlined the problem, and then we broke up into groups to brainstorm possible solutions
Miro Board for Discovery Workshop. I included personas and journey maps from our Japan research as points of comparison. Outlined in red are the journey maps that summarize the research and the problem we focused on for the workshop. In green are supplementary materials for participants. In blue are the ideation boards for the two teams—we met up after ideation to discuss each team’s ideas.
SOLUTIONS
Update signage and fliers to make them easier to digest at a glance, with an information hierarchy that reflects rider interests
Focus marketing efforts on channels that matched the persona’s background
Update vehicle wrap to address this rider’s questions
Research appropriate information channels in hospitals on our route and share information about May’s service in those channels
OUTCOMES
Ridership in Indianapolis doubled once these efforts got underway
I continued research to establish which personas were impacted by our new efforts
I outlined a path of research that can be adapted and used for all of our service locations in the future
