Puente — Sayena Majlesein

Overview

Transportation and the growth of a future smart city go hand in hand — and Seattle, adding roughly 120K new residents with most commuters already mixing modes, was the test bed. As a two-person Master's capstone advised by Amazon, teammate Sophia Li and I set out to design a travel system for commuters who mix driving, biking, walking, and transit — and constantly hit friction doing it.

Research

I led the research: recruiting 12 multimodal commuters from over 100 screener responses, running 7 semi-structured interviews, conducting a 150-minute "fly on the wall" observation during U-District morning rush hour, and running a diary study to capture real-life transit behavior — plus expert interviews with the Seattle Department of Transportation and UW to understand the policy layer.

Narrow by design

Transit apps limit mobility behavior by only surfacing a narrow set of alternatives.

No integration

Lack of multimodal integration — technical, physical, financial — blocks new mobility habits.

Freedom, replicated

Multimodal transit has to replicate the freedom and independence private cars provide.

"The problem is I never know if the bus has any space left on its bike rack till I get there and see." Alia, a study participant who bikes everywhere

Approach

From a participatory design workshop I facilitated, we ran Crazy 8's to generate 150 concepts, narrowed with a decision matrix against three design principles — seamless, personalized, durable — and landed on a concept combining transit accommodation, real-time info, and voice-driven recommendations.

Prototype testing surfaced real friction: a dark color palette caused usability issues, and 4 of 7 participants couldn't complete tasks using voice commands alone. That drove the dedicated voice UX pass I owned — designing for trip planning at home ("Puente" wake phrase or a tap) and quick in-transit customization, with explicit corrective feedback when the assistant misunderstood intent.

Commuter

"Puente — get me to South Lake Union by 9."

Puente

Bus 40 in 6 min, then a short walk — 32 min. Or bike to the rail, 27 min — but the 40's bike rack is full right now.

Commuter

"The bike one."

Puente

Set. I'll tell you when to leave, and re-route if the rack fills.

Wake phrase at home, tap in transit — with corrective feedback when intent is misread.

The voice pass in miniature: planning by conversation, with the bike-rack constraint — Alia's exact frustration above — surfaced before it wastes a trip.

"Access to cars gives a lot of people what they want: freedom. Freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want." Armin, from his transit diary study

Impact

47%Faster transit decisions in moderated prototype testing

93%Of formative testers asked for early access

12 + 7Formative study participants + expert interviews

The research and insights were shared into the city's broader Smart Seattle conversation. My biggest lesson: designing a natural, seamless voice conversation takes as much craft as designing the UI around it — sometimes more.