Brightn is the final project for a design class that I have taken in Fall 2016, and we are a team of five Cal students coming from very different backgrounds.

We were asked to improve the commuting experience, and after a few cycles of iteration and a pivoting moment, we decided that we would like to  reimagine the riding experience of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART), targeting specifically young commuters, using colors and lighting.

Our idea is presented in the form of a final presentation pitch and a 3D prototype of the interior of the train. Unfortunately we didn't take a picture, but the prototype basically shows:

1. colored seats

2. a simple circuit with light bulbs simulating the effects of lighting

3. colorful mural ads on the wall

Here is the final pitch for our project Brightn:

As you can see, our team went through quite a few cycles of iteration, and at one point, we pivoted from our original idea of redesigning the physical interior of the BART.

Here is our team's journey map throughout the whole project, a visual illustration of what how we have came along -

We did over 50 interviews with people in our target population - young commuters taking the BART to get to work. We noticed a consistent theme amongst all the interviews, which is a lack of sense of safety and an overall depressing atmosphere, as demonstrated here in some of the highlights from our user interviews:

So, how might we target the problems that came up during the interviews?

Here are some of the points that came up during our cycles of ideation!

As you can see, we had a lot of ideas...

One of the problems our team had before we pivoted is that we didn't converge enough, and things ended up getting too complicated... So we learned our lesson, and finally converged on the idea of adding color and vibrancy in BART by changing the color scheme on the BART and adding colored lightings to make the riding experience more pleasant for young riders.

We used a matrix chart to evaluate our ideas:

So, COLORS.

Our assumption is that there are certain emotions associated with different colors, and that changing the color in an environment will have an impact on people in the environment!

Here are some of the research we did as we tried to understand how colors matter!

In fact, we found out that we are not the only one unsatisfied with the colors on the BART, and people are petitioning and giving feedbacks on the BART's colors.

Now that we have collected enough evidences and came up with an idea, we also considered the business aspect of our idea using the value proposition model, including potential partners, revenue streams, key value proposition, customer segments, channels, etc.:

We also looked at our potential competitors out there in the market:

Further business models to prove that our plan is feasible!

Finally, we did surveys to get feedback on our product/idea!

We surveyed 70 people in our targeted population, and over 70% of them agreed that our product will improve their riding experience with the BART, as illustrated below:

Lastly, since we can't physically implant our idea on the BART, we did some digital version of what our prototype would look like:

Before (left) v.s. After (right) with new color theme and improved lighting on the BART

Additional Materials: 

Some of the system maps I made

Name tags I designed for our fabulous team members