Apparently, school is the best time of a person’s life. For a kid, it’s true most of the time. But when you’re a parent or a guardian, “school time” often becomes a nightmare of hectic schedules. Everything from piles of homework to taking the child to the bus stop tends to become a battle against time.
A father of two (The Client) faces a similar situation almost every other morning when he has to take his kids to the bus stop. On some days the trio has to wait for the bus for long minutes wondering if it had left before the scheduled time, until they find the big yellow vehicle arriving. The situation leaves the kids late for school and the client late for work.
On some other days, they see a yellow blur speeding past when they are just ten steps away from the stop. Client checks his watch to see that they are absolutely on time but the bus driver had probably decided to readjust his watch.
Things get even worse when they have to wait at the bus stop, knee-deep in snow, in the world-renowned winters of Canada. And to go through all these troubles at the beginning of the day inevitably drops the domino effect on all other activities!
To put an end to these inconveniences, client decided to take resort to the saying “necessity is the mother of invention”. And thus we got Lumyri, a first-of-its-kind school bus tracker in Canada that ensured that time and safety both are valued.
This app is initially intended for use in Canada only, with plans to make it global in the near future.
Challenge
The idea of creating a tracking system for a school bus seemed easy at the beginning. We already have hands-on experience using a couple of apps for office commute and observing how their tracking systems work.
Lumyri had seemed to be something very similar. But when we sat down to chalk out the plan, we realised that this wasn’t as simple as we had expected it to be. To make sure that every information was smoothly and efficiently fetched, the app needed to have a vast array of information fed to it. It was like a large board filled with wires and LED lights, waiting to get the connections right.
The deeper we dug, the broader the scope of the project seemed to get. And what a challenge it turned out to be! Absolute fun!
Discover
Lumyri is targeted towards making the lives of guardians easier by eradicating the entire scenario of waiting for school buses with a snap … I mean, with a tap. This meant that the app had to coordinate with the bus drivers. An admin at the bus company was needed to keep track of everything and to make sure that everything was in sync.
Since there are children involved, we needed to take extra care about security. Somebody needed to ensure that the bus had safely reached the school with every child on a given bus’s list and that every one of them had safely gotten off the vehicle. So, there needed to be at least one school staff member with the app in hand.
After chalking out the details, we had four different sets of users:
- The guardian
- The bus driver
- At least one school staff member
- The bus company
Oh! Did we mention support staff for smoothly tackling any problems that might arise?
We needed appropriate information about the school bus system and about the related problems of every type of end user involved in our application, and gathering that information from miles away in Canada became easy, thanks to the efforts of our client.
Define
One admin to rule them all!
The central point of Lumyri is the bus company, which is why everything would be maintained and operated by the admin there. This would include adding, editing and deleting information related to:
- Students
- Guardians
- Schools
- Buses
- Employees and contractors under the bus company
- Bus routes
- Payments
Guardians, drivers and school authorities would be given login credentials by the bus company.
Now, in case any guardian has to assign someone else to take care of the child’s bus-related requirements, they would have to request the bus company to add the person’s name along with their relationship with the child.
The application not only focuses on making commuting easy but also on making it safe and secure.
Design
A large application like Lumyri needs to be baked in parts. We decided to begin with the mobile application on the guardian’s end since that would be quick and easy.
Now, let’s not forget that Lumyri was just a concept when it had reached us. And to go into the market, a concept needs a face. We are talking about the brand design.
While the wireframe was being prepared, we simultaneously started working on the moodboard and eventually on the logo for the new face in the market.
The next stops were the driver’s end and the school member’s end.
Then came the largest chunk of the application; in fact, almost 98% of Lumyri lies here – the web application at the bus admin’s end.
Wireframe
Wireframe
User Interface Design
User Interface Design
Scope of Improvement
“Just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.”
— Shuri
And Shuri was perfectly right! Lumyri has already gone through a lot of changes that have improvised the original flow. While it is yet to hit the market, we are already anticipating user feedback and windows for improvement. Looking forward to making a positive impact in the lives of many!!