During a time of significant growth in its offerings, Austin’s Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority selected fd2s to provide comprehensive experience design services for its Great Customer Care project. This project aimed to improve the “clarity, effectiveness, and functionality” of the Capital Metro system. The activities of the fd2s team included:

• Conducting observational research and surveys to better understand the real-world experience of people who use the Capital Metro system.
• Looking at another successful and mature transit system to learn how and why it works.
• Producing recommendations that could lead to new services and offerings.
• Tying those recommendations to metrics that enabled Capital Metro to gauge their performance.

The result was a suite of practical, actionable tools that played a critical role in developing new Capital Metro services, facilities, and communications tools. This included twenty-six guiding principles designed to help project teams and outside contractors create comprehensive, user-centered solutions. The exercise also produced 20 industry-leading best practices in land use, transit-oriented development, financing, technology, placemaking, and marketing.

fd2s also worked on subsequent phases of the project, which included the creation of rider communication tools in the environment, the design and documentation of standards for facilities such as bus stops and transit centers, the planning of rider amenities, and leadership of the consultant teams (including architects, engineers, etc.) responsible for final design and documentation.