Navigating the mental load of bus driving
Format: Tablet-based mobile application, fixed route real-time navigation
Team: Product designer (solo), PM, engineer, CEO
My role: Product design, research
Status: In progress
In most regions, public transport services are delivered by private operators under contract with government authorities. These contracts include strict service performance requirements that weigh heavily on bus drivers. Operators can face serious financial penalties for service delays, early arrivals or completely missed stops.
The driver navigation solution is designed to guide bus drivers along their scheduled routes with turn-by-turn instructions, helping them to stop at all required timing points on time and thus reducing financial penalties for the operators.
Why build a fixed route navigation
A lot of the early user experience insights came through my boss, who was in direct contact with bus drivers, trainers and depot managers. I also messaged several drivers online over time to gather input and feedback. Most of the research that kicked off this project was informal and conversational, but through these conversations, several more problems that the driver navigation tool could help solve came to the surface:
Driver recruitment and retention are at crisis levels: Some operators are losing more than 50% of new drivers within their first year, largely because the job is said to be so stressful.
Training is time- and resource-intensive: It often takes multiple trainers working over several weeks to prepare a single driver for just a few routes.
Route memorisation is the most stressful part of onboarding: It slows down training and puts pressure on new drivers before they’ve even started.
Understanding the burden bus drivers carry
Listening to the industry
Drivers currently need to memorise every route they’ve been trained on. They also have to remember the day’s timetable, stop locations, and any deviations. This makes the job extremely stressful and increases the risk of mistakes. If they’re not on time or miss a stop, they know their company won’t get paid for that trip by the authorities.
Defining the core problems
To begin, we focused on the core problems that directly impact a driver’s ability to complete their shift on time such as:
Remembering the route: knowing exactly where to go
Remembering all stop locations: ensuring no stops are missed
Remembering stop arrival and departure times: staying aligned with the schedule
Remembering timing points: hitting critical locations on time to avoid financial penalties
Designing for the 50+ end user
Before we started designing, we really wanted to understand whom we were designing for. The average driver age is around 55. Most are not particularly tech-savvy and work in high-pressure environments with little room for error. Over time, they’ve developed their own systems with handwritten notes, memorisation techniques and shift “cheat sheets” to work around the gaps in existing tools. These personal workarounds became a valuable starting point to go from problem space to solution space.
Our main focus was simple: How can we remove all that stress for a driver?
We broke down each pain point and explored what a digital experience could look like that supports a driver’s ideal environment.
Remembering the route (where to go): We introduced turn-by-turn navigation based on the driver’s scheduled shift.
Remembering all the stop locations: We designed a shift overview mode that lists all upcoming stops and also integrated each stop into the navigation while indicating live progress.
Remembering stop arrival and departure times: We added live timing guidance to show whether a driver is running early, on time, or late.
Remembering timing points (which affect penalties): We included clear visual indicators for timing points, helping drivers know when precision matters and when they may need to slow down or wait.
Piloting a navigation system
We're currently testing the navigation in real-world conditions with active shifts. What I realised before we started testing is definitely the complexity behind a tool like this and how heavily it all relies on the data behind. While testing we're already realising that the navigation alone isn't enough. To make it truly useful, we also need to build small supporting tools like a route editing interface.
This is a pretty exciting and unique problem and what I've learned here is that when time is limited on the customer's side, you need to really know what you want to test with them: how to build a proper MVP and prototypes.