I've been trying really hard to reserve judgment on this upgrade, but since you're asking here, this is a
huge step backwards in usability.
The good: you've added offline maps. Unbelievable oversight from the original app.
The bad: the new app completely fails for essentially all of my practical uses as a local.
My most common use case for the MTA app is to look up the train schedules from whatever station I happen to be near. Most often, this means I am standing in front of a station with lines I don't know well, and I want to know when the next trains will arrive, and where they stop. This redesign makes that 10 times harder than before to find either answer. Specifically:
* If I don't have the line I'm using starred, it's almost impossible to bring it up quickly.
It requires (?) a free-text search that doesn't work very well, because numbers and letters are commonly shared amongst train lines and stations. This is a baffling choice -- there aren't that many lines in NYC, and they have distinct iconography. Just
list them and let me bookmark the lines (and maybe stations) I care about most.
* Even if I do happen to have the line starred, getting to the interface I actually care about (the arrival/departure times for whatever station I am near), requires multiple clicks, which I usually screw up.
Again, trying to reserve judgment here, but I'm a technically savvy person, and I
still can't figure out the UI, after several weeks of daily use.
* Getting to the (ever-present) set of service exceptions is difficult, and even when I know that service is disrupted, it can be nearly impossible to see the relevant alert(s).
For example: today service was disrupted on the 1,2 and 3 lines at various stations throughout Manhattan, but I was misinformed repeatedly by the app about closures in different directions. I don't have my phone in front of me right now, but the way these are shown is truly baffling, and I can't explain in detail from memory. I'll follow up later with more on why, if you're interested.
* I rarely need trip planning. If I do, I have a maps that will tell me a plausible route, and do a better job of it.
What I need from this app is the real-time arrival data, closures, and less often, the system map. Yet this app seems to be pushing trip planning over all other features.
If I had to build this app, I'd do the following:
* Rip out the trip planning.
You're not good at it, and you're never going to be as good at it as maps. It just confuses the UI.
* Keep the system maps. Make the common one available from a single click. Make it available offline.
Again, this is the only major improvement I can identify from the prior verison.
* The primary screen should be a list of lines.
I should be able to bookmark lines and stations. Those lines/stations should sort to top.
* Clicking on a line should take me to the list of stations on that line. Clicking on stations should take me to station pages.
I should be able to toggle between uptown and downtown, and view cached arrival times for all stations, even without network access.
* The line page should have all the alerts in one place.
I shouldn't have to click multiple times to see the relevant alerts. Put the ones affecting the entire line on the line page. Put the ones affecting particular stations on the station page(s).
* Stations on the line page should have iconography to indicate if they are currently being skipped due to closures / maintenance.
Goal here is to have one-glance knowledge of the stations being served
right now.
* Stations on the line page should show me the list of lines I can transfer to from that station.
Bonus points if you indicate which ones aren't running.
* Ideally, you'd show me the projected arrival times for the current line *to each station on the line page*.
Having to click a station is failure prone (doesn't work w/o network access), and it doesn't allow me to quickly see if I can go to a different station.
* BONUS POINTS: automatically use my location to figure out the set of lines/stations near me, and sort these to the top.
Double points if you preload these, so that they work offline.