www.isepta.org
Randy Schmidt and Chris Conley from Ümlatte came up with the iSepta project as an experiment. It presented a fun technical challenge, gave us a chance to collaborate with a small, agile team and offered the opportunity to solve a really frustrating real-world problem.
As commuters, Randy and Chris have had first-hand experience with the difficulty of finding train times using the gigantic-info-blobs that pass as SEPTA’s online schedules. They needed a better solution, and instead of living with frustration, they simply decided to build one. Their idea was to take the schedules to the iPhone web application platform so they could get the information easily from anywhere.
When they showed me their prototype, there were just two drop-down menus and a button. Pick your stations and it displayed a list of upcoming trains on any regional rail line. While it wasn’t slick looking, I immediately recognized the potential in this simple interface. It solved the problem of finding train times by asking the most basic questions: where am I leaving from, and where am I going?
I immediately offered to pitch in with user interface design… the project was just too cool to pass on. The iPhone platform for web applications presents a wonderful balance of features and constraints. The small screen, narrow bandwidth (of the EDGE network) and touch-only interaction mean that an application has to be pared down to its essential elements. On the other hand, with access to all the benefits of Safari, you can use some really cool stylesheet properties still unsupported by most web browsers.
Within a month, after several iterations, we had a great looking and pretty easy-to-use interface. I was overjoyed at the easy of working with Randy and Chris — both really insightful guys and excellent developers. They gave me consistently great design and usability feedback and were receptive when my design experiments suggested changes to the programming. Honestly, it was the most fun and most efficient development process I’ve ever been involved with. Serious kudos to Ümlatte.
We’ll keep working on the app, with the goal of making public transit more and more fun and easy to use. We’ve got lots more ideas, so keep iSepta bookmarked on your iPhone and we hope you never miss a train again.