Product & Experience Lead | Public Transport Mobile App

A major public transport authority's mobile app was operating as little more than a mobile website with data feeds falling well short of what customers needed from a modern, real-time transit experience. The goal was to rebuild from the ground up: a native app underpinned by a scalable API platform, delivering the right information, in the right format, at the right moment in the customer's journey.

I led the multidisciplinary team responsible for designing, building, and delivering the app spanning developers, content producers, and publishers. Building team trust was a deliberate priority from the outset. I created an environment where every team member had a genuine voice in how we approached design and delivery, while also championing a culture of continuous customer testing that pushed us beyond assumptions and into evidence.

Working in agile using Jira, we adopted a build-and-test philosophy from day one taking the experience out onto the live transport network to gather real customer feedback at each iteration. When designs that looked strong on paper failed in the hands of real users on real devices, we went back to the drawing board without hesitation leaning on our expert panel to reframe the problem and develop tested alternatives.

I also identified and addressed a critical gap in front-end development capability mid-delivery, bringing in additional specialist resources to maintain momentum and quality without compromising the timeline.

The resulting native app launched in 2017 and remains in active use today featuring real-time service tracking, favourite stops and destinations, service update notifications, and accessibility options designed to serve the full breadth of the travelling public.

This project shaped my belief that great digital products are built at the intersection of technical rigour, team trust, and relentless customer testing and that a leader's job is to hold all three together simultaneously.

Mobile site to native for transportation