Today was a nice day for me professionally, one I'll remember for a long time.
This is because today TriMet, the transit agency of Portland, officially launched Hop card, its new tap-and-ride fare card system. The Hop card a "smart" system. One basically buys a card from a local retailer, loads it with money using a credit or debit card, and then taps it each time one gets on or off one of the three transit systems of the greater Portland area (TriMet itself, the Portland Streetcar system, and the bus system of Vancouver, Washington).
The name "Hop card" is meant to refer both to the idea of "hopping on the bus" but also obliquely to the hops used in the brewing of beer, because of the local microbrewery industry.
The "smart" part about the Hop card system is that it has fare caps. If you use your card once to buy a fare, then you effectively have a pass for the rest of the day, and no more money will be deducted if you use the card again. It also works that way for capping on a week and month basis too.
The whole system has a web interface, for managing cards, both on an individual level, and also on the corporate level for passes given out to employees.
Originally, when this project started a couple years ago, TriMet wanted a system like the one they have in London (the Oyster Card). They hired a German database company that specializes in transit systems to create the tap-and-go card system, and install the tap readers in the train stations and buses.
But Portland being Portland, TriMet told the German database company that as part of deal, they would need to subcontract the design the card management website to a local Portland company, which could build one that had the right "Portland look-and-feel" and the expected Portland-level digital user experience (what we in the trade call UI/UX). Anyone familiar with the design industry in Portland would understand what they mean.
So for the website the German database company hired a local Portland firm, and they began building this "front-end" website so people and companies could manage their cards online.
This local Portland design firm is one that, like most design firms, specializes in graphics. They know how to "brand" web sites, and make them look cool. For example, they recently made a site for Spotify, and they go to SXSW each year to soak up the hottest digital trends.
But they didn't have expertise in building web applications---doing the code work that makes complex sites actually do their thing, They had one developer, but they needed a second one to keep up with the work. So they hired me, in the Spring of 2016, back when I lived on East Burnside. I've been working on this over a year now.
It's been very rewarding, and I've gotten to meet and work with a lot of great people, at TriMet, at the German database company, and at the Portland design firm. All of this while on many days I don't even leave the grounds of our house up here above Scottsdale.
In the last few months, the beta testing of the consumer site went very well. I perused the reactions on the Portland Reddit, and most reactions were very positive. Throughout last week I was in last minute bug fix mode, doing little changes all over the app, and committing them to the code repository on GitHub.
One of the last changes I had to make was to tweak the Google maps that lets you find a retailer for the Hop card. I had to change autocomplete of the address you enter so when you started typing "Vancouver" it would return results for Vancouver, Washington (just across the river) instead of being swamped with results from the city in British Columbia.
I hadn't ever used this part of Google Maps API before (that part of the app had been built by someone else, but he was gone). It was fun looking up how to make that change and tweak a parameter so the search worked the way they wanted.
On Friday we wrapped up the last "sprint" (a term for a short development cycle comprising specific goals). All through the morning, I kept giving them new releases of the software, even hourly, as we found the last few bugs of the day.
The last couple hours on Friday were calm, and then the messages from them stopped entirely. I took that as a good sign. They were satisfied. Moreover, we actually met the project deadline in a very graceful way, without any last minute crises.
Today my colleague at the design firm in Portland informed me (via our Slack channel) hat Hop Card has been launched.
So far no frantic emails from TriMet. Things seem to humming alone.
You want to try it out. Here it is. I've been staring at that interface for a long time. I didn't do any of the stuff that looks pretty. All of my stuff is in the way the application works, handing the data and doing it's application tasks. Like I said, a very rewarding experience.
And wow, there's already a Wikipedia article about Hop card.
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