Transfers
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- 57 N61 N75
i've been redesigning the public transport screens for ottawa, which recently launched on buses in 2025. they're also on trains, but i feel the trains dont need a better screen nearly as badly. this is the official screen
some key notes:
The thread for feedback is here for fediverse, and here on bluesky
i am aware the code polls twice on firefox for some reason but have no idea how to fix iit
human peripheral vision is pretty sensitive to movement. an animation can take advantage of that fact to notify an otherwise distracted user that a stop has been passed. Animations also give an opportunity to follow the flow of information easier! a large animated red stop border is much stronger confirmation of a press of the stop button than squinting at a tiny checkmark that randomly appears. animations also make it easier to identify the direction of movement at a glance, and avoid getting lost when information changes position suddenly.
its an absolute shame that the stop request confirmation icon on the official screen is so bad. the picture i showed doesnt have it, but its a tiny checkmark in the tiny circle next to the stop name. it also doesnt follow the existing colour scheme and is kinda ugly. The official signs also do a poor job of identifying the most important information, and so i find myself having to spend a significant amount of time parsing the information.
i also find it completely inadeqete that there are so few stops shown on the official signs. showing more upcoming stops, and adding passed stops, helps someone at a glance figure out where they are easier. youre less likely to look away from the scrreen for a minute, and be disoriented by all the info being different. the fact it doesnt show transfers is also fucking rediculous and an easy win.
i reallt wanna add some form of geographic indicator as well. Im mainly considering a horizontal bar on the top, that a bus icon moves along as it travels. Oslo also shows a openstreetmap map of the surroundings around the upcoming station, and im thinking about combining that with tranfer info (just like oslo! although, i have some rripes with how oslo implements this, so not exactly the same).
im also considering retaining the vertical line wlth circles to the left of stops, like in the official version. however, i want to make the circles a progress bar of how close you are to that stop, based on gps. this is inspired by wellington, and i found it much more intuitive than the binary minute markers, since it shows much finer grain detail (although, i think gps errors and refresh rate are a bit of a problem when bus stops are so close together, as they are in ottawa on non-rapid or express routes)
i also plan on redesinging the layout and colours to be more attractive and readable, now that i have a decently working prototype. i would like to add more real information but. terms of api use make that hard