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Objective:
How could we improve the transportation habits and experiences for people visiting the King County Metro website.
My role:
In this two week long project, in collaboration with a research team, I worked as one of the researchers to brainstorm survey questions, testing the survey, data collection, and analysis.
King County Metro Website
User Experience and Accessibility Survey Report
Survey Results:
Overview of the Service and Website
The King County Metro website is a comprehensive portal for public transportation services within King County, Washington. It offers users access to a variety of resources, including trip planning tools, route schedules, maps, fare information, and service alerts. The site also provides details on different transit options, such as bus services, RapidRide lines, and the Water Taxi. Visitors can find information on accessibility services, parking locations, and bike-transit integration. The website is designed to assist residents and visitors in navigating the public transit system efficiently and effectively.
The website has two portals with similar functionality:
Demographic Info
The survey participants were primarily young adults, with 45.45% aged 18–25 and another 36.36% aged 26–35. Notably, there were 0% respondents in the 36–45 age group, while 13.64% were aged 46–55, and 4.55% aged 56 and over.
In general, younger participants reported using public transit more frequently. More than half of all respondents use transit less than three times a week, while 26% reported using it daily, 10% use it 3–5 days a week, and another 10% never use public transit.
The 26–35 age group had the most positive responses to the survey, while the most extreme opinions—both highly positive and highly negative—came from participants in the youngest (18–25) and oldest (46–55) age groups.
Summary of the Survey Data
The survey participants were primarily young adults, with 45.45% aged 18–25 and another 36.36% aged 26–35. Notably, there were 0% respondents in the 36–45 age group, while 13.64% were aged 46–55, and 4.55% aged 56 and over.
In general, younger participants reported using public transit more frequently. More than half of all respondents use transit less than three times a week, while 29.17% reported using it daily, 12.50% use it 3–5 days a week.
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The 26–35 age group had the most positive responses to the survey, while the most extreme opinions—both highly positive and highly negative—came from participants in the youngest (18–25) and oldest (46–55) age groups.
Feedback on the Metro website’s usability was mixed. While 21.74% found navigation somewhat easy, the 26.09% remained neutral, and 4.35% rated it very difficult.
Similarly, 52.17% had a neutral experience finding schedule information, while only 21.74% reported a positive experience, 4.35% reporter a very positive experience, suggesting that users often struggle to navigate or locate key details.
With 94.44% of respondents accessing Metro information via mobile phones, mobile-friendliness is crucial. Real-time service alerts were considered only somewhat helpful by 50% of respondents, with 22.22% dissatisfied. While the website functions adequately, it does not strongly impress or frustrate most users.
Suggestions for improvement centered on accessibility and usability enhancements, such as better screen reader compatibility, improved contrast, larger text, and clearer time formatting. Respondents also recommended a more intuitive routes section, clearer real-time delay updates, and a direct link to the Metro app for convenience.
There does seem to be some survey data that appears to be corrupted and should be filtered out. In particular, a few highly negative responses came from individuals who spent less than a minute on the survey and skipped all the self-reported questions, suggesting they were rushing through it for extra credit.
Finally, 39.13% of users were likely to recommend the website, while 8.70% were unlikely to do so. These findings highlight a clear opportunity for website optimization, accessibility improvements, and streamlined navigation to enhance the overall user experience.
Next Steps
Areas that our group should focus on next is what happened to the demographic age group of 36-45? Do we have less users between this age range using public transportation? Did this age group find less interest in participating in this survey?
Questions to explore next is would improving accessibility and usability enhancements increase the users use of transportation and visiting Metro’s website, including intuitive routes, clearer-time delay updates, and a direct link for the Metro website? How do users visit the Metro website (web search or a downloaded Metro’s app)? What feedback does users have to improve in-person transit service? What feedback does the users have to improve our survey and how can we combat social desirability bias and other ways in which our test data could be corrupted in the future?
Establishing the users problems with the website and transportation we can move forward with addressing the bigger problem. Although a website is provided for these users, lack of accessibility and usability enhancements is decreasing the use of transportation and visiting Metro’s website. Users are requesting intuitive routes, clearer-time delay updates, and a direct link for the Metro website. This could be done with an additional survey on desired resources and what these resources look like for users. Once this is completed, the Metro website will be more intuitive and useful for users riding public transportation.
What I Learned
​This UX research study was done as a learning experience for me to explore a website, ask open-ended questions to allow users to provide feedback through an unmonitored survey via survey monkey​, and understanding what UX researchers experience.
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Asking open-ended questions during an unmonitored survey allows users to openly provide feedback in a generous amount of time.
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UX research is an ongoing process that extends across all phases of the product development lifecycle. Research ensures user insights consistently inform the design team ways to improve user experience with a product.
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Although this research study was completed in two weeks, I am honored to experience the process of conducting a study as a researcher, assessing results when receiving user feedback, and reporting the data into a study for the design team to use as a guide to make updates. It is important to validate users experience to avoid biases and understanding the importance of researchers process to set up the design team for success. ​