Forge38

Last night we officially launched our latest project, iSepta, “Simple SEPTA Schedules on the Go”. Our goal was to make accessing the SEPTA regional rail schedules simple on your cell phone. Although iSepta was initially built for the iPhone, it works just as well on many mobile devices and even your laptop or desktop.

Our number one goal with this application was to make it as simple and intuitive as possible. Although SEPTA’s presentation of schedules works great on paper pamphlets, it leaves something to be desired on mobile devices as you can see in the screen shot on the left. We decided to throw away any preconceived notions of how users should interact with train schedules and think we came up with sexy solution that you see on the right.

Features

• Start/Stop: Catching the next train is as easy as choosing your start and stop stations, which will return information for the next 5 trains.
• Recent Trips: Your five most recent trips you have planned will now show up on the home screen along with the next three trains for each trip.
• Route Numbers: The appropriate route number is now displayed with each train

Upcoming

• Route Names: This will really connect people with what they see at the station. So rather than displaying just “R5” with each train, soon we will display “R5 Thorndale/Paoli.”
• Alert Notifications: SEPTA does provide realtime information on trains that are running late or have been cancelled which we will be integrating shortly into iSepta

One more thing…

Text message support! Simply text “iseptanow start station name to stop station name” to 41411 and receive the next 3 trains. For example, typing “iseptanow market to doylestown” will return the next 3 trains from Market East Station to Doylestown. You only have to type enough of the start and end stations to make it unique, so “iseptanow mark to doy” will also work.

Stay in the Loop

Make sure you keep up to date with what’s going on with "iSepta"http://isepta.org/ by subscribing to our “RSS feed”http://blog.umlatte.com/feed/atom.xml or following us on twitter. And as always, let us know what you think! Suggestions? Comments? Anything!

Credits

"iSepta"http://isepta.org/ developed in partnership with the talented Mr. Tremblay who developed the awesome user interface. This project would not have been possible without Indy Hall where all of us met.