The first time we changed our homescreen, it ended in disaster.

It was 2014. Two years after we’d first launched Transit in the App Store. We had a giant list of planned improvements. Time to reimagine everything, we chanted.

So we did. We reimagined everything in Transit. We took our homescreen’s colourful list of transit ETAs, known as “Nearby”, and snuck it behind a big map with buttons.

The rest, they say, is history.

Transit 2.0 (left): Nearby’s transit departure times, right on launch. Transit 3.0 (right): we had big plans for our homescreen’s map — so we hid “Nearby” behind a button.

Almost 20% of our users stopped using Transit.

Literally overnight.

We learned something that day. Homescreens are sacred. They’re your identity. Change your homescreen, users will end up feeling catfished. Sometimes a homescreen redesign is a necessary, drastic last measure. But for most apps (like Transit) radically changing your homescreen is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, bathtub, and bathrobes.

So when we started plotting Transit 5.0, we knew continuity was key. Nobody was messing with the homescreen this time. In this update, we’ve fixed long-standing issues and made our app more powerful. But we’ve kept the important parts in place. You won’t feel lost when you open 5.0. You’ll feel right at home. Except now, your home is a palace.