The displays in our new buses are confusing.

An analysis and re-design of the display systems in Singapore’s new buses.

Recently my girlfriend noticed the new electronic display in some of the buses and quipped: “Wow, I didn't know we had these displays in Singapore buses. It’s quite cool huh.” I was surprised this was the first time she had seen them because these displays have been spotted in the wild back in early 2018.

For the uninitialised, these are the relatively new Passenger Information Display System (PIDS) which the Land Transport Authority (LTA) rolled out recently. These displays came together with the spanking new MAN buses and they look something like this:

Passenger Information Display System (image credits to land transport guru)

At first glance, this display might be unassuming, it might even earn itself a few praises for being “futuristic” or “user-friendly”. However upon closer observation and scrutiny, one cannot help but frown at some questionable UI decisions the designer made for this product delivered in 2018. Below are some of the points I refuted to my girlfriend for thinking that it was a “cool” piece of software.

Lots of circles — Their penchant for perfectly globular UI elements is not going unnoticed. There are 3 instances of information being displayed in rounded circles: Bus number, Arrival status and Current time. All of it having different sizes, alignment and absolutely zero respect for padding. There is seemingly no purpose of having all 3 information enclosed in a circle. It only makes the interface look inconsistent and cluttered with unnecessary visual artefacts. Font-weight overdose — There are instances where font-weights can be used to effectively put emphasis on certain content. But in this case by having a different font-weight allocated to every single upcoming bus-stop (seems like a blatant use of Light, Regular, Medium and Bold) is simply a visual no no. Content reads from bottom to top — If you have not yet realised, the way the bus-stops are presented is such that the immediate stop is at the bottom (i.e. Blk 151) followed by the one above it, so on and so forth until the huge jumbo title at the top being the destination, which is usually a bus interchange. This leads to the least important bus-stop having the most emphasis at the top for the whole journey, while the most immediate bus-stop is buried at the bottom.

No one: Literally no one: LTA: Let’s arrange the upcoming bus-stops from bottom to top.

Maybe they were going for the depth effect, where the upcoming bus-stop is being shown at the front of the z-axis, with the subsequent stops being smaller and more “distant” from the onlooker’s perspective. But the current design clearly fails to illustrate this perspective at first glance.

Personally, such a display should serve a simple purpose of having highly visible content and displayed in a way for commuters to pick up all the information available intuitively without doing a double take. So here is my take on how these displays can look like instead.

Display when bus is moving to the next stop

Display when bus is arriving at the next stop and the bell is pressed

Display when the bus have reached the stop

Some points:

Upcoming bus-stops are now arranged from top to bottom. Like how it should have been. Static bus information (i.e. Bus number and Destination) and Time is in a color scheme and font style that separates itself from the more dynamic information above it. Color and font chosen to look like the external LED display at the front/side of the bus. Added icons for individual pieces of information (Bus number, Nearby MRT and Time) to help commuters and tourists make faster visual connections. Retained large font sizing to assist commuters visually and those sitting at the back.

Here is how it looks like superimposed:

My version of the display

As a frequent commuter, I feel that this design would be able to alleviate most of the confusion I felt with the current design. But never mind what I think, what do you think? Feel free to leave any comments / suggestions / critiques in the comments below :)