RidePATH is the official app of the PATH train, connecting thousands of daily commuters between Manhattan and New Jersey, providing users with real-time updates, service alerts, train schedules, trip planning, and favorited stations, all in one place for a convenient journey. As a daily commuter, I will draw on Don Norman’s principles from his book “The Design of Everyday Things” to critique the RidePATH app’s user experience.
Screen 1: Real-time
At first glance, the app has a clear hierarchy, with a labeled bottom navigation icon and a top navigation that lists the user’s favorited stations. The app’s main use is immediately clear, as the countdown to the train’s arrival captures users’ attention as soon as they open the app.
What works: Pairing icons with labels in the bottom navigation provides clear signifiers and leaves users with no doubt about what each icon means. Showing users’ favorited stations as soon as they open the app makes the best use of knowledge in the world over knowledge in the head, offering riders a shortcut instead of remembering and typing each time (recognition over recall).
What doesn’t work: While favorited stations offer a useful shortcut, the main way to view and search schedules for any other station is through the “All stations” button in the top-right corner, which is easy to miss because it’s small and low-contrast. I had to find a workaround (stage 2-planning) and favorite a new station without realizing this exists. So a design flaw could completely misdirect users’ behavior. It is also placed right beside the accessibility icon, which makes them look related by the Gestalt principle of proximity, though they are unrelated.
The countdown itself doesn’t provide real-time updates, contradicting its actual purpose. It doesn’t indicate any delays or early arrivals – a feedback gap that reduces users’ trust in the system. The app also doesn’t adapt to the user’s current location, forcing users to scroll across different stations and widening the Gulf of Execution, since adding a new station to the favorites list requires leaving this screen and doing it elsewhere (“more”).
Solution: 1. The “All stations” button could be designed larger and with high contrast for quick discoverability, and it can be placed with considerable spacing from the accessibility icon to quickly convey that they are separate.
2. A live delay/early tag could be placed next to the countdown number to reflect the real status of the train.
3. The app can auto-detect the user’s current location, minimizing Gulf of Execution.
4. Lastly, add a “+” icon next in the top navigation for quick addition of favorite station.
Screen 2: Schedule
Everything is similar to the real-time screen with an additional “All/To NJ/To NY” filter.
What works: The direction filter works well here and serves as a useful constraint, letting commuters quickly check a few schedules instead of a long list of trains.
What doesn’t work: This screen has the same issues as the real-time screen: no location awareness and no live delay/early-arrival updates, indicating a flaw in the design’s conceptual model.
Screen 3: Plan a trip
The multi-field search by date/time/origin/destination aligns with how people usually plan a trip, making it easier to use without having to learn something new.
What works: The fields match a familiar conceptual model by mirroring the structure of most flight and trip booking platforms, minimizing the Gulf of Execution. The system provides strong feedback by giving timestamps for every stop along the route, not just the final destination, when the user searches for a train route.
What doesn’t work: The dropdown arrow next to the fields isn’t clickable; instead, users have to tap the text itself. This is an affordance mismatch, since the dropdown arrow visually suggests it can be clicked to view options.
Additionally, every train in the results shows an exclamation icon, which can cause slight panic, even though the alert is the same across all trains and is already shown on the screen that lists the trains. The alerts are also not always train scheduling updates.
Solution: 1. The entire field, both the text and the dropdown arrow, should be made clickable.
2. Common alerts across all trains can be shown on the screen that lists all the trains, while indicating the exclamation icon only for trains with specific alerts.
Conclusion
While apps like Google Maps are often preferred for trip planning because they provide better location-based context, RidePATH has strong potential for real-time train updates, since it is the official PATH app. Live updates with indicators for early/delayed arrival would make the app more reliable. The app could also personalize the experience by being more contextually aware in terms of the user’s current location. Additionally, the app could integrate ticket purchasing, making it the one place for all of the commuter’s needs and reducing the need to switch between different apps.