Creating a Multi-modal Mobility App for Columbus
Client SMART COLUMBUS AND CENTRAL OHIO TRANSIT AUTHORITY
Project PIVOT APP DESIGN
OVERVIEW
As part of implementing the $40 million Smart City Challenge grant awarded to Columbus by the US Department of Transportation, Smart Columbus sought to improve mobility and increase access to jobs, education, and services for Linden and Easton-area visitors, employees, and residents. Smart Columbus partnered with Lextant to better understand the mobility and transportation issues that people face and design a solution to improve access —Pivot, a multi-modal trip-planning mobile app serving the city of Columbus.
01 THE CHALLENGE
Filling a gap for the under-served.
People in under-served areas such as Linden (a Columbus opportunity neighborhood) and Easton (an employment and retail district) struggle to find transportation options that fill the gap between the bus and their home, work, or other destination. Through interviews and focus groups, Lextant helped Smart Columbus understand the issues facing those areas.
02 THE RESPONSE
User-Centered Mobility
In addition to its Smart Mobility Hubs—strategically placed kiosks for connecting with alternative transportation such as scooters, bike-share, or ride-share pick up/drop off points—Smart Columbus introduced a multi-modal trip-planning application. This app allows users to book multiple forms of transportation, with one payment, to get to their destination in the most efficient way possible. Lextant’s research informed the design of the app, named Pivot, from information architecture through visual design and specifications.
03 THE RESULT
Beyond the impact of the project delivery itself, Smart Columbus has memorialized learnings of the program in the publicly available grant documentation and reports, and published demonstration data as open datasets in the Smart Columbus Operating System. As such, the program has created a playbook that other cities may follow in implementing similar technologies, so that cities may build upon the learnings the program gained, and the challenges it encountered.
