Client: Transport for NSW
Date: 2021 to 2023
What is SCATS?
The Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) is a revolutionary real-time traffic management platform used in all major Australian cities.
It connects intersections and adjusts traffic signals based on real-time conditions, ensuring a smooth and efficient flow of vehicles.
SCATS covers all aspects of traffic management, utilising predictive data analytics, live CCTV feeds, and vehicle priority features. These integrated elements enhance efficiency, safety, and decision-making in traffic operations and empowers operators to manage complex traffic scenarios with precision and finesse.
With a focus on sustainable city planning, SCATS aims to reduce travel time, minimize congestion, and create a more environmentally friendly commuting experience.
Current state
Why this project?
To modernise the SCATS system and align it with the ever-changing transportation landscape, the Accenture team embarked on a transformative mission:
- Introducing a map-based, spatially aware interface that enhances user interaction and streamlines traffic management.
- Transitioning from a native desktop application to a browser-based platform, offering improved accessibility and flexibility to users.
- Addressing interface inconsistencies and enhancing the overall user experience
- Elevating the digital maturity of the client to embrace a forward-thinking approach
This new platform is named Control Centre.
_________
As the lead of our UX/UI team, I championed UX strategy, conducted and synthesised research, and created prototypes to align stakeholder expectations with those of users.
_________
My day-to-day activities
My day-to-day activities included:
- Planning and prioritising sprints and goals
- Conducting, synthesising and documenting user research
- Creating research plans, personas and user journeys
- Ensuring all design were informed by assumptions, hypothesis statements, pain points and insights
- Creating prototypes and wireframes
- Documenting decisions, insights and creating templates to ensure a smooth process
- Presenting end-of-sprint updates
- Working closely with the Product Owner, SME, deliver leads and of course the other UX/UI designers
Methodology
The diverse team continually adapted to the evolving stages of the project. Our approach, guided by Elabor8, generally followed these principles:
1. We focused on building key feature areas as defined by the business stakeholders, which formed the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
2. User interviews (personas, user journey maps) helped uncover new requirements and improved approaches, aligning them with existing features (referred to as epics to align to our delivery model).
3. Requirements were prioritised in Productboard, where user feedback was stored, while general information was documented in Confluence.
4. The Business Analyst (BA) and UX teams agreed upon a loose scope, which was further validated through research, depending on complexity.
5. Quarterly release schedules were aligned to a user journey, ensuring a comprehensive flow test and identification of any missing components.
Specifically within our UX/UI team:
- Fostered close collaboration with subject matter experts
- Developed and validated concepts and prototypes to ensure feasibility and refine designs iteratively.
- Conducted regular validation sessions with the engineering team to incorporate valuable input into the design and implementation process.
- Held cross-team workshops, enabling innovation across teams. Additionally, documented results and utilized templates to measure and communicate the achievements effectively.
How SCATS works
One of the biggest challenges of this project was the highly technical environment. Traffic management algorithms are extremely complex and the Network Operations persona really kept us on our toes.
If you're reading this far, and are interested in some basics, imagine the groupings of instruments within an orchestra, lead by a conductor. This parent-child relationship helps coordinate the whole network.
Additionally within intersections these concepts are at the core:
- Phase splits: green time for each movement/phase'
- Cycle time: total time to run all movements/phases
- Linking offsets: time difference between the start of green at nearby intersections.
Solution part 1: Discovery
We can't effectively solve something until we have a clear idea what the problem is.
Some activities were partly undertaken before I was onboarded. I returned to the basics to ensure we had a clear vision as the project evolved.
Activities included:
- Reviewing previous research and user data
- Customer interviews and shadowing
- Persona creation and updates (CRO and NetOps)
- User journeys
- Review product strategy
- Aligning to Design Standards
- Using UX activity templates
Solution part 2: The problem space
Set a clear direction on what problem to solve
As we started development quickly, the problem space was mostly done alongside the delivery phase.
Activities included:
- Assumptions and hypothesis statements
- User flows
- Information Architecture
- Pain point analysis
- Design principles and inclusive design standards
- Prototypes and wireframes
Solution Part 3: The solution
All pieces of work began by bringing forward the relevant pieces from the problem space e.g. hypothesis, how might we's, pain points, insights, and best practices in the existing system, or in the Material Design language.
Releases were made up of features, tied to a common user scenario.
Some examples:
— A groom is late for their wedding due to slow moving trucks creating congestion on a side road. The Control Room Operator (CRO) needs to clear congestion and allow the traffic to move along
— The CRO persona discovers a faulty detector alarm, acknowledges the alarm and applies a Permanent Demand which will now call the phrase regardless of the presence of any vehicle.
— The CRO persona has changed the cycle length of an intersection. He adds a note, and compares other sites along a corridor to assess the impact of the intervention.
— The CRO persona wants to understand how the network is linked, to better perform an intervention on a single site
Results
The Alpha trial was the real deal, working with live data in and out of the personality that runs the Sydney traffic system.
Some highlights from the 72 invited participants:
- "I was able to complete all tasks easily."
- "Ability to compare sites is also great. Saves having to open multiple windows, thank-you"
- "A pie chart is more suitable to show the splits. It gives you the relative proportion of time allocated to all phases, at a glance, and is easier to understand..."
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Users were positive about the experience, and as expected many requested additional features. Traffic management is an intricately interconnected concept, with many personal approaches and preferences.
By embracing a design-led approach and leveraging UX tools alongside a well-defined product strategy, the future of the SCATS platform is an exciting space to be.