We have our first release of a WAP/WML (cell phone) interface for the Surfer. Go to:
[If you follow the link in a regular web browser, you’re not likely to get anything meaningful.]
Note that it’s not 100% complete. We don’t have menus to select lines or stops, you MUST enter a stop number. But once you do, you have the ability to surf along stops on the line or to nearby lines.
I’m very interested to hear how well this works on different phones. Please comment with feedback!
7 responses to “Transit Surfer Catches Cell Phone Wave”
I’ve been using this this week. It works great–not to mention the fact that it really impresses those sitting near you on the bus when they ask for information. Any idea when we will get a stop ID look up feature? Or is that available somewhere that is accessible to cell phone internet browsers?
Scott Mizée
npGREENWAY
http://npgreenway.blogspot.com
“I’m very interested to hear how well this works on different phones. Please comment with feedback!”
oh…. I got a Motorola E815 for Christmas. Verizon is my service provider.
Scott, since WML doesn’t have the concept of pull-down menus (at least not in a form that works on all phones), I’ve struggle with how you work through the route list and then the stop list.
TriMet does it on their interface (trimet.org/wap) but it taks a LOT of clicks. I could replicate that I guess, but I’m trying to think of something more clever. Let me know if you have any ideas.
What about instead of having to enter your stop ID, we go back to the original Trip tool type option and allow you to enter your address on the cell phone version? The address could be converted to a Lat/Long Coordinant and it could tell you how many feet to the 10 nearest stops/lines in all directions. It seems like this would be more useful. This is sort of a combination between our two existing inputs now on trimets site and the transit tracker site… without all the messy look up of the stop ID…
Scott, that’s probably not much of a technical challenge on the server side, but I wonder about two things from the usability side. I’d love to have readers comment:
1) Would you really bang out a street address on a cell phone keyboard?
2) Are there too many contexts where you wouldn’t know the address (anybody know the street address for the Rose Garden)?
1) Would you really bang out a street address on a cell phone keyboard?
Yes. I would rather have the option to “bang out a street address on [my] cell phone keyboard” than to hunt my way back over to Tri-Met’s site and try and figure out the stop number from there. The other option that I used yesterday morning was to “virutally ride” the line from a stop number I did know down the bus line a few miles to the stop I was going to be leaving from. This took way more time than it would have taken if I would have simply been able to punch in a street address or intersection at the beginning of my trip. The stop number would still be the first point of input on the opening page of your app, but a secondary option should be to input an address or intersection. That’s taking this handy little app to the next level.
-Scott
Oh forgot to answer your second question:
2) Are there too many contexts where you wouldn’t know the address (anybody know the street address for the Rose Garden)?
Yes, there are many contexts where you don’t know the address, but there are even MORE contexts where you don’t know the stop number. Stop numbers are easy once you get to the actual stop, but street intersections are often known before you get there and therefore makes the tool better for “on board” trip planning. I do this almost every day when riding the yellow line into North Portland. I have several connecting bus options and I want to know which one is going to make me wait the least amount of time. –after all my wife and kids are at home and about to sit down at the table and me sitting for another 15 minutes waiting for a bus to take me the lat 2 1/2 miles of my trip does not help the situation! :)
-Scott
Hope to see you and others tonight at the Kenton Firehouse for a community meeting regarding npGREENWAY (friends of the North Portland Greenway Trail) http://www.npgreenway.org