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The Right Kind of Information Silos. What should be unified a nd where diversity is key. 2019 CALACT Spring Conference. Thomas Craig, General Manager t homas@ trilliumtransit.com Portland, Oregon. Concepts. Individual vs the Community. Individual Cars Personalized apps. Community
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The Right Kind of Information Silos What should be unifiedand where diversity is key 2019 CALACT Spring Conference Thomas Craig, General Manager thomas@trilliumtransit.com Portland, Oregon
Concepts Individual vs the Community Individual • Cars • Personalized apps Community • Public Transit • Unified apps
Concepts Information silos vs multimodal systems Information silos • Fixed-route tripPlanners • Taxi booking app Multimodal systems • Flexible trip planning • One-call One-click
Concepts Duplicated processes vs unified systems Duplicated processes • Configure AVL, Google, Website separately • Stop asset inventory and GTFS database Unified systems • All end points drawn from GTFS • Stops database linked to other systems
Obviously, we need one big unified system that supports a perfect app that serves all our customers.
Misconceptions The obvious answer isn’t the right one The desire to prevent duplication of work has led us to try to unify our data architectures and our user interfaces. That’s good for data architectures. That’s often bad for user interfaces.
Data architecture What makes a good one?
Data architecture What makes a good one?
Data architecture What makes a good one?
Data architecture What makes a good one? There’s no way around different pieces being involved--in fact that’s the point. The critical goal is to ensure that those pieces interact through standardized connections in a modular system. Often times, having one vendor causes more complications than multiple vendors.
User Interfaces What makes a good one?
User Interfaces What makes a good one?
User Interfaces What makes a good one? A good user interface is as simple as it can possibly be. Everything but the interaction points are should be totally hidden from the user. The number and context of interaction points must be limited and refined.
Data systems and user interfaces What makes a good one? Data architectures have to be extensible. You have to be able to plug things in. User interfaces should avoid “extensions”.
So what does the agency do? How does an agency maintain good data and support diverse users? • Use data standards wherever possible • Expect technology vendors to get data from other systems and/or provide data to other systems • Accept “free” things from the market where available, and where you understand “free” • Invest in the things the market doesn’t provide • Expect maintenance to cost more than estimated
Who are your disadvantaged riders? They deserve good user interfaces too. Help them out.Build them the silo the market won’t provide. Thomas Craig, General Manager thomas@trilliumtransit.com Portland, Oregon