Designing for Access: Making Usability a Public Transit Priority
Emily Saunders joined the Bytemark team in 2021. In the short time that Emily has been a part of the organization, she has reorganized the User Experience (UX) team, put standardized design aspects into play, and has driven the Product team to improve the research, creation, and implementation of UX in both customer-facing applications and agency backend systems. Read on to learn about Emily’s first-person account of how she is making accessibility an essential initiative within the industry.
Always passionate about the design of experiences and spaces, I studied Biology, Society, and Environment at the University of MN to tap into learning and solving problems. After school, I lived in Italy, working in the restaurant industry to learn the language and design experiences for customers. This led me to Sales and Marketing where I continued to advocate for customers.
It was customer advocacy that helped me find my passion: UX design. For over two years I studied UX design while continuing to work at my day job. This training helped me take complex problems and break it down into designing or redesigning user flows. There are multiple ways to bring considered and well-designed UX to users, but the idea of bringing this methodology to the masses—through mass transit—met my career goals to help others.
Public Transit and User Experience
One of the exciting aspects (and one of my constant considerations) is a commitment to the agencies and riders of public transit. I always think about my role as one that understands and advocates for the user. This, along with my passion for accessibility, user experience, and diversity and inclusion push me to implement new processes and initiatives to build and improve on Bytemark’s strong commitment to its employees and users.
On a day-to-day basis, I ensure that our products are accessible to all riders and transit employees. An added bonus: I get to partner with accessibility experts. This keeps me in the loop (as does my constant need to learn and improve my skills) in the latest accessibility standards and technologies.
Team collaboration is key too. I work with our developers so that we have the right information and procedures to ensure accessibility is central in design and development. It is my mission to initiate the audit and optimization of our web platform’s responsiveness to make our solutions accessible and user friendly across all screen sizes. Finally, I am empowered in my role to introduce a design system to analyze existing user interface components for accessibility and usability.
Photo by Amélie Mourichon on Unsplash
Empathy and Product Design
Web accessibility is not the only type of accessibility that I am passionate about. The human-centered design process enables me to empathize with our users and build products that make public transit more accessible, or available, to those who need it most. One of my goals is to encourage everyone to ride public transit, including Bytemark employees. Getting out and riding not only improves the user experience for our solutions, but also increases employee engagement and idea generation. (I know it has for me.) It has been satisfying to see more team members observing and talking to our target users. I am convinced—and so are they—that this results in better user understanding that drives innovation. My “Get Out and Ride” project has helped motivated Bytemark employees to observe, reflect, and discuss the rider's experience firsthand. I am beyond proud of this initiative and the enthusiastic approach the team has made to leave the office and ride.
I also spend time researching equity and inclusion in the industry. As a leading member of Bytemark’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee I get to ask the tough questions of how our company—and industry—can be more equitable and inclusive. One focus is how to go beyond our pledge to MobilityXX and succeed in increasing the number of women in the transportation taskforce. I get to use the human-centered design process to empathize and define where pain points exist with Bytemark employees. My goal is to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the industry.
In my short time with the company and the public transportation industry, I have seen the problems with returning ridership, as well as the issues that transit-reliant passengers face. My goal is to continue to improve the user experience for everyone. Everybody deserves a well-designed user experience and access to mobility.
About Emily Saunders
Emily has been evangelical about bringing accessibility and usability to the forefront of every conversation. Her contagious approach to rider experience has been adopted by Bytemark functional teams. It was for this reason that Bytemark nominated Emily to the Mass Transit “40 Under 40” list.