BusMyFriend: Designing a bus reservation service for people with visual impairments in Taipei

Public transport is vital to visually impaired people. In particular, they heavily rely upon the bus network that has a larger coverage area than other forms of public transportation. We observed and interviewed 14 visually impaired people, and compiled information about the various challenges they faced when taking a bus. Comparing this information to the existing assistive solutions that aim to solve specific problems such as looking for bus stops or informing them that the right bus is arriving, our goal is to improve the bus riding experience of the entire journey. Here, we designed a service called BusMyFriend in three components: 1) a mobile app which provides a seamless bus reservation service for the visually impaired, 2) minimal notification through bus telematics system for bus drivers, and 3) tactile indicators at bus stops. Preliminary studies showed that our service is capable of guiding the visually impaired users to board their desired bus and alight at their destination successfully.