OVERVIEW
MyWay.NYC is a rethought, bespoke approach to an urban navigation app—designed specifically for getting around NYC more effectively. Having been conceived as a project for both New Yorkers & visitors of all abilities, the MyWay.NYC app melds user-provided information and publicly-accessible data to help travelers efficiently traverse the city, offering customized travel speeds and vetted routes.
Why MyWay.NYC?
New York City is a large, imposing urban jungle that can be difficult to navigate. The sidewalks are cracked and uneven. Construction and street seating—and all that comes with that—are at what seems like every turn, blocking pathways. And for people with mobility issues, getting around NYC is especially hard. On top of the obstacles mentioned above, as of December 2020, only about 25% of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) 424 subway station complexes were considered accessibility-friendly. While there are different tools that provide information about how to navigate New York City and locate ADA MTA subway stations, there currently isn’t any one app expressly tailored to helping guide people with mobility issues down the most accessible travel routes while taking into account factors such as customized travel speeds.
This project addresses this inequity in infrastructure and access by designing a customizable navigation app that factors in personalized rates of travel for New Yorkers (and visitors) helping them to pace themselves. What’s more is that there is quite a bit of information publicly available about the current state of New York City (and its transportation system) via sources such as NY State’s Open NY & the city’s NYC Open Data. This data could be used to improve travelers’ of all abilities experiences by helping identify things like down elevators at subway stations, areas with street seating (via Open Restaurants), and potential hazard spots on their routes by pulling from the Curb and Sidewalk Complaints database. MyWay.NYC’s goal is to tap into such data, along with users’ preferences, to create a friendlier, more personalized way to get around New York City.
As someone disabled and who has experienced being overwhelmed by getting around parts of NYC, I know first-hand how taxing—time-, energy-, pain-, and money-wise—this issue can be. Familiar with the strains of navigating the city with people of different mobilities, I also know how exhausting it can be to pace yourself while traversing across town. It was these frustrations—and a few projects from a maps-based class—that led me to develop MyWay.NYC.
Process
When I looked toward existing technology for inspiration, my biggest concern for this project became the idea of having an empty app presenting itself as full of promise (and opportunity to navigate more easily), because the infrastructure (users and databases to update ‘obstacles’) either isn’t there, or isn’t ready for it. By focusing on travelers in NYC, and *only* NYC, as my user base and drawing on existing, largely-untapped public databases (via APIs) to supplement user reports (for things like out-of-service elevators, cracked sidewalks, and potential pathway obstacles caused by street seating), I’d hoped to design an app that’s both useable and useful for people of all mobilities.
To help fine tune the features I would most focus on in developing MyWay.NYC, I started by creating a few “Dream Reviews.” This is something I commonly use to define my goals; specifically, I ask myself, “What do I want people to say about my project once I’ve finished it?” In doing so, I start to concretely define what success might look like and set the stage to develop processes designed to help get me there.
As accessibility speaks to providing access to those often not considered, rather than creating just one Dream Review (from one ‘type’ of person), I decided to create three:
Once I created the Dream Reviews, I decided to flesh out personas based on each of them—listing their background, behaviors, and goals—then noting a few suggestions that might be helpful during the development process. Here are the Personas for the three Dream Reviews above:
Takeaways
This project was my thesis project for my master’s from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, May 2021. I had the privilege of having my thesis reviewed by the MTA’s Chief Accessibility Office, Quemuel Arroyo. Below is a copy of my thesis presentation, chock-full of takeaways!
ITP Thesis Week 2021: Martin Martin from ITP_NYU on Vimeo