About VOLT.
Vegas Optimal Luxe Transit is an autonomous public transportation service for Las Vegas. Our study aimed to develop a smartphone application to provide riders with a unique travel experience customized to their specific preferences. It is a new type of public transportation system integrating AI technology to provide tourists with a faster and more convenient means of navigating through Las Vegas.
Research Team: Samari Pedraza, Ryan Pineda, Marco Salinas, and Dr. Sang-Duck Seo
My Role: UX Researcher, user ability testing, designer, writer, and presenter.
Research Accomplishments: Presented at UNLV Spring 2024 Undergraduate Research Symposium
Duration: Fall 2023-Spring 2024 (10 months)
Project Type: UX Design Research and User Ability Testing
Programs: Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, Miro Google Slides, Docs, and Sheets
VOLT Branding
The name of the autonomous public transportation service app is called VOLT – Vegas Optimal Luxe Transit. It employs a modern and energy-efficient color palette featuring green, blue, black, and white. The colors green and blue were primarily chosen for the brand's identity as the color blue represents science, futuristic, trust, and dependability–representing Artificial Intelligence [3]. The color green was selected from the term “green energy” or “renewable energy” symbolizing environmental friendly and sustainable energy practices– encouraging the use of public transportation to reduce carbon emissions.
The logo consists of two designs, a primary and secondary logo. The primary logo is a name logo that uses a San serif typeface. One version of the name logo can be seen in black and the second version can be seen in the blue and green gradient. The secondary logo is an icon of a pinpoint with a bolt across it. The lightning bolt symbolizes speed and efficiency, while the pinpoint represents a location or a destination. For the typography, we selected the same sans serif font from the logo for the overall app. The typeface is called Montserrat. Keeping the same font helped with the overall consistency of the app. We utilized various font weights and colored text to establish different hierarchies.
Branding was Initially designed by Ryan Pineda. I gave feedback and provided research to further refine the overall branding.
User Persona
User Flowchart
User Testing
Presentation Poster
Poster was designed by my whole team! I was in charge of adding all the user testing data since I conducted all the data. I also added Explore feature screens. My team presented at UNLV's Research Symposium of Spring 2024. We were given a total of 10 minutes to present our research, findings, and UX solution proposals, then had 6 minutes of Q&A from the judges.
Explore Feature
In Task D users can use the explore feature to discover popular destinations, attractions, and events in Las Vegas. The explore feature uses AI algorithms to recommend users' destinations based on places they’ve visited. Users can also read information and write reviews as well as save a location or add it to their route. A successful completion of this would be for users to discover places in Las Vegas enticing them to add it to their current or future routes.
I was responsible for designing wireframes for the Explore page. I designed various pages and organized information that will help users explore and discover new places in Las Vegas.
Wireframes
Figma Wiring
Conclusion
Overall, I gained a deep understanding of UX design, particularly in the research and testing phases. It was fascinating to experience firsthand the full process involved in developing an application. Although we faced many challenges and moments of trial and error, each obstacle was a valuable learning opportunity. I had the privilege of working with a talented team and a professor with extensive experience in the field, which made the collaboration both enjoyable and insightful. I thrive in team environments, and collaborating with my teammates and other groups was especially rewarding. This experience was definitely challenging, and at times I felt unsure due to my limited knowledge going in, but it pushed me to grow. Now, I feel more confident and better prepared for future UX design projects. I'm incredibly grateful for this opportunity.
