MSU Denver
2026
RTD My Ride
A redesign of the RTD My Ride app, focused on elevating the rider experience, making everyday transit feel more premium and considered, without sacrificing the accessibility and ease of use a transit app depends on. The redesign spans wireframes, user flow mapping, usability testing, and a companion watchOS app.
Project Overview
A redesign of the RTD My Ride app, focused on elevating the rider experience.
The redesign makes everyday transit feel more premium and considered, without sacrificing the accessibility and ease of use a transit app depends on. The redesign spans wireframes, user flow mapping, usability testing, and a companion watchOS app.
Problem
Localizing app features and creating a more cohesive user experience.
The existing RTD My Ride app pushes users out of the app for core functionality, for example; planning a ride requires opening a browser, and several other features are only accessible outside the app entirely. This breaks the experience at exactly the moments it should feel most seamless, and undermines any sense of the app as a considered, cohesive product. I wanted to bring these interactions natively into the app and in doing so, use the opportunity to also elevate the overall visual and interaction design.
Process
Research → Design → Test → Refine
Research & Definition
I began by mapping the existing app's user flow to identify where friction occurred, then designed for a specific user persona: a first-time college student planning a transit trip for the first time. Using this persona, I built a digital scenario map and user journey which tracked emotions and pain points at each step to understand exactly where the current app was failing this user. From there, I developed an updated content map in the form of a user flow chart, laying out what the redesigned experience needed to accomplish. In parallel, I explored typefaces and color direction, building a mood board to establish the visual tone I wanted the app to carry.
Design & Testing
With the flow and visual direction defined, I moved into wireframing and developed new brand guidelines including button styles and iconography to give the app a cohesive design system. I built out a prototype for usability testing, then applied feedback from that round and tested again to validate the revisions. Most of the feedback I received surrounded making the app feel more personable, like adding messages to introduce the user to features and greeting them upon each log in.
watchOS Extension
In the final phase, I designed screens for one component of the app to extend the experience to watchOS, exploring how the redesign's core interactions could translate to a smaller, glanceable format.
Challenges
Balancing the design with the needs of the audience.
The central tension throughout this redesign was balancing an elevated, "luxury" visual language against the accessibility standards a public transit app has to meet. Luxury design often leans on restraint including generous whitespace, subtle contrast, minimal on-screen information, however a transit app can't sacrifice legibility or clarity for a first-time rider trying to catch a bus in real time. Every design decision, from color contrast to icon complexity to type sizing, had to be weighed against the question: does this feel elevated, or does it just make the app harder to use quickly? Designing for my persona, a first-time college student navigating the system under time pressure, helped keep that tension grounded, since accessibility couldn't be treated as a constraint on the aesthetic, but as part of what "elevated" needed to mean for this specific user.
Outcome
Addressing real friction.
Final feedback was strongly positive. Users felt a sense of comfort with the redesigned app and expressed genuine interest in using it. Notably, many of the people who tested it had used RTD in the past but had since moved away from it, which suggests the redesign addressed real friction, not just surface-level polish. This is a project I want to keep developing: my next step is to continue evaluating and refining the experience, working toward a fuller, more realized app prototype even if it isn't fully coded end-to-end.
