What’s Next with Noble: Transportation and Passenger Experience

Reimagining Movement Through UX, Infrastructure, and Innovation

AuthorAuthor

Paul McConnell & Fadila Prastawa
July 31, 2025

The Lead: Transit, UX & Tech 

It’s summer. You’ve got tickets to a game, a concert, maybe even a beach day. Or you’re just trying to get to work without breaking into a sweat. But—surprise—the train’s delayed, the bus icon vanished on the app, and your bike share station’s full. Suddenly, your experience anywhere is shaped by your ability to get there. That’s the thing about transit: it’s not just infrastructure, it’s the connective tissue of city living. And when it fails, so does everyone relying on it.

At Noble, we’re obsessed with the systems shaping how people move, wait, and experience the city. From how to encourage passengers to use mass transit again to, to better ways to park EVs, to vertical takeoff pads (yes, that’s a thing now), transit design has become a laboratory for behavioral change, tech innovation, and the messy realities of public life. We geek out over wayfinding systems, crowd flow patterns, and what your transit app should’ve told you 5 minutes ago.

In this edition we spotlight how UX, tech, and policy shape how people move through cities. We track stories, tools, and trends that reveal both the promise and the challenge of public spaces, from clear signage to frustrating delays. Because good transit isn’t just about logistics—it’s about people.

Deep Dive: From Adaptive Signs to Dynamic Decision-Support

Digital is no longer and after thoughts in transit—it’s becoming critical for movement, safety, and trust. Across subways, airports, and public streets, digital wayfinding is being reimagined. Deep Dive looks at three examples leading that shift: Transits expanding digital network, aviation focus on integrated terminal experience, and the scaling new visual and interaction systems.

Image: Mijksenaar, W&CO

Port Authority: Standards That Scale

Behind the visible upgrades at JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports lies a quieter but critical transformation: the creation of unified wayfinding standards. The Port Authority of NY/NJ implemented a new signage system across all three airports—a system so impactful it earned recognition from the Society for Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD).

Designed by Mijksenaar USA and W&CO, this playbook governs iconography, typography, placement, and multilingual support—helping establish a consistent visual language across some of the world’s busiest transportation hubs. However, a major challenge often arises after launch: what happens when the original design team rolls off, the guidelines get buried in a PDF or Google Drive, and new staff rotate in without context or ownership?

Even the most iconic systems—like Legible London or Unimark’s work for the MTA—have required decades of stewardship to maintain their clarity and coherence. Without that kind of long-term discipline, standards can erode, especially in cluttered, ad-heavy terminal environments that compete for attention and confuse travelers.

Noble Take: The Role of Standards in Long-Term Projects

In mega-projects that take years to design and decades to realize, flexible digital standards are essential.

Too often, teams lock into fixed UI or signage patterns early on—only to find them outdated by the time systems go live. The best standards are modular, interaction-aware, and context-sensitive, allowing for new technologies, behaviors, and access needs to be layered in over time.

There’s a lot the built environment can learn from digital playbooks like Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines or Google’s Material Design. These systems offer clarity and cohesion—yet leave space for localized expression and innovation. That balance is exactly what today’s physical/digital spaces need.

Image: Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)

MTA: Designing for Real-Time Decisions

Remember before accurate schedules and real time date, a passenger would lean over the platform edge to see if a train was coming. Members of the Noble team helped design some of the first digital interfaces and software in the system over a decade ago.  Since then, New York’s MTA has deployed over 9,000 digital screens across subways and buses—now fully integrated with a real-time subway map and designed to sync across stations, apps, and alerts. These displays push information like reroute suggestions, service updates, and last-train countdowns, helping riders respond in the moment. 

The effort now extends to the street: bus stop displays piloted in Manhattan and Queens show live arrival times and alerts—no app needed. Rider feedback is shaping future updates, and the MTA is already testing these displays for crowd flow management.

Meanwhile, in the D.C. Metro area, Metro Rewind took a different approach—turning transit data into an immersive rider experience. Using year-end stats from WMATA, the project transformed ridership numbers into personalized archetypes, playful illustrations, and shareable “tarot-style” rider cards. It wasn’t about wayfinding—but about re-engagement. By making data visual, emotional, and fun, the campaign helped riders reconnect with the system in a post-pandemic era.

Noble Take: What Real-Time UX Really Demands

The most effective transit signage systems aren’t just about screens—they’re about understanding how people navigate space under pressure. Successful digital UX in transit environments is shaped by real human behavior: where people look, how they move, what decisions they need to make, and when. Simply scaling a touchscreen or signage pattern from one location to another rarely works.

Things like glare, lighting conditions, animation speed, and reflection can make a screen helpful—or overwhelming. Context-aware design is what transforms digital signage from noise into true wayfinding. As outlined in this experience framework, ambience isn’t just mood-setting—it supports clarity, trust, and flow.

Image: Port of Portland

PDX & SFO: Blending Utility with Experience

At both Portland International Airport (PDX) and San Francisco International Airport (SFO), design choices aren’t just about making things look good—they’re about helping people move with ease.

At PDX, a new indoor navigation app uses real-time routing and Bluetooth wayfinding to support all travelers—especially those with vision, mobility, or cognitive disabilities. It reframes navigation as something digital and adaptive, not just physical and static.

Meanwhile, at SFO, the reimagined Terminal 1 brings together practical wayfinding with thoughtful design: natural light, sound control, and curated media displays help reduce stress while guiding people where they need to go. The space reflects a new kind of UX—where comfort, orientation, and calm work together.

Both airports show what’s possible when signage and sensory experience are designed as one continuous journey—not separate layers.

Noble Take: Coordinating Utility and Ambiance in Transportation Spaces

More airports and transit spaces are facing the challenge of coordinating functional digital systems (utility) with immersive creative installations (atmosphere). Whether in Portland, SFO, or others, we're seeing terminals that want to tell a story and move people effectively.

The tension is real: how do you guide someone through a stressful security checkpoint while surrounding them with ambient light art or poetic screen content? These experiences often serve different persona journeys—visitors, business travelers, families—and demand different communication priorities.

Bottom Line

From subways to terminals, wayfinding is no longer just about signage—it’s about systems. When design standards stay flexible, digital tools reflect real behavior, and physical spaces balance clarity with emotion, transit environments become more than functional—they become intuitive, human-centered, and ready for change.

Events to Watch

The Airport Experience Summit 2025

📍 Guangzhou, China | 🗓 September 8–11, 2025

The premier global event dedicated to airport customer and employee experience is happening. Join 800+ airport leaders, CX experts, and tech innovators for keynotes, strategy sessions, and a showcase of new tools shaping every touchpoint—from curb to gate.

In the Lab: Prototyping the Transit UX of the Future

Transit systems are evolving fast — from static schedules and rigid signage to responsive networks shaped by real-time data. At Noble, we’re prototyping tools to help agencies keep pace, translating operational complexity into intuitive, human-centered experience. Here’s a look at what we’re testing now — and what it could mean for the future of public mobility.

• Mission Control for Signage: A CMS for rapid alerts and context-driven guidance, inspired by our learnings from MTA and LinkNYC.

• Multilingual Wayfinding: QR-powered, chat-based guidance that meets riders in their language.

• Digital Twin Lite: A physical-digital rig to test how signage, apps, and sensors can move together in real time.

Why We Prototype

Noble’s role isn’t to sell one-off gadgets. It’s to help transit agencies imagine, test, and refine systems that work — across signage, mobile, and physical space. Whether it’s a smarter CMS, a multilingual assistive layer, or a testing platform for future tools, we’re focused on translating complexity into clarity.

Want to see the tools in action?

Image: Leo Patrizi

Signals: Trends Shaping the Transit Experience

Beyond daily disruptions, we’re tracking the broader forces shaping how people navigate cities. From invisible infrastructure to emerging expectations, here’s what’s surfacing:

Real-Time Everywhere

Agencies are pushing real-time info beyond train boards—think smart bus shelters, platform countdowns, and street signs that respond to crowds. If a rider has to consult a paper schedule, that’s now seen as a failure. The goal: no blind spots, ever.

AI-Powered Forecasting

Transit systems are beginning to predict demand, not just react. Hong Kong’s live digital twin forecasts crowding across metro, ferry, and bus networks. This could soon look like Waze for transit: “Expect a rush at Station X—rerouting suggested.”

MaaS Gaining Ground

What is MaaS, you ask? Fair question—we hadn’t heard of it either until recently. Mobility-as-a-Service means bundling buses, trains, bikes, and scooters into one seamless app or subscription. No more juggling five different apps just to get home. The future feels less like mode-switching, more like one continuous journey.

Contactless Everything

Tap-to-pay and QR-coded tickets are fast becoming standard. From fare gates to real-time info at bus stops, phones and cards are now keys to the city. But digital equity and fraud prevention remain important design challenges.

Accessibility Goes Digital

Accessibility tools are getting smarter and more embedded. Think Bluetooth wayfinding, text-to-speech signage, and AR glasses showing real-time alerts. With regulatory support and funding, these aren’t side projects—they’re becoming the norm.

Climate Resilience = Rider Experience

Agencies are responding to climate not just with hard infrastructure, but with comfort in mind. More shaded shelters, better lighting, and emergency-ready signage are being built into the everyday. Resilience is now part of UX.

Looking Ahead

As transit systems evolve, so do the expectations of the people moving through them. From responsive signage to digital twins, we’re seeing the line blur between infrastructure and experience, between getting there and feeling seen along the way.

But mobility is just one part of the picture.

In our next edition, we’re heading into cultural spaces and asking: how does digital engagement reshape what we feel, learn, and remember in public places? From immersive exhibitions to algorithm-informed curation, we’ll explore how design and tech are reimagining the shared experience of culture.

Oh, and we’ve also been spending time around Moynihan Train Hall—mapping how a space that complex balances wayfinding, identity, and public flow. More on that soon.

Thanks for reading. If this sparked ideas, questions, or critiques, we’d love to hear from you. Noble is committed to partnering at a system level – if your transit or civic organization is tackling similar challenges, we’d love to chat. From innovation sprints to full-scale implementations, we help translate big ideas into practical solutions.

Until next time,

Fadila & The Noble Team