Problem Statement, Solution Overview

Personas and Scenarios

Description: Final Interface Design

Design Evolution

Presentation

Prototype

May 11, 2004

Problem Statement

Traffic is often cited as one of the major headaches associated with living in California, particularly in the Bay Area. Over the last few years, the problem of encountering regular traffic bottlenecks at various points on the Bay Area freeways has gotten noticeably worse for a regular commuter. A major part of this difficulty can be alleviated by empowering the commuter to make more informed decisions on the time and the direction of travel. Many people rely on personal driving experience to determine an optimal departure time as well as an optimal route, one that would allow them to bypass the most serious traffic jams. At the same time, few people are actually familiar with traffic patterns across the entire Bay region; yet, our lifestyles often require us to commute to unforeseen or unfamiliar destinations, to places where our personal driving experience may not be the best guide.

Solution Overview

We have built Road Sage, a traffic forecast system. At the core of our system is an interactive map that displays either the current highway speeds or, depending on the user's selection, a typical traffic map for a particular day of the week (e.g. Monday) and time of day (e.g. 9:30 am). Users can select an origin and a destination; in response, our system displays a map-enabled guide for their selected commute: the network of freeways is color-coded on the map according to the average speeds that are typical for that particular time of day, as well as some brief driving directions. Users can also explore traffic patterns on other days and at alternative times by using the day and time scrollers (described in more detail below under “Functionality”). Our data feed comes from Caltrans and their network of remote sensors installed on various highways throughout the Bay Area. Caltrans data streams are stored in a database operated by the Freeway Performance Measurement System, PeMS. The PeMS project is conducted by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Berkeley.

Work Distribution Table