Case Study: OneBusAway achieves clear prioritization and faster feature rollouts with IdeaScale

Saving Time and Money with Clear Prioritization

OneBusAway is a University of Washington–built platform that gives Puget Sound riders real‑time transit arrival info via web, phone, text and a popular iPhone app (50,000+ downloads). Run by a small student team, OneBusAway needed a way to collect user feedback and—critically—prioritize which bugs and feature requests to tackle with limited developer time.

They added the IdeaScale web feedback platform and an in‑app iPhone widget, which in months brought ~1,300 active feedback users, 190 user ideas and 1,000+ votes. Crowdsourced prioritization helped the team implement features like full route views, disabling “no stops,” reporting erroneous estimates, trip details and arrival notifications, speeding development, saving time and increasing user satisfaction.

OneBusAway

Brian Ferris

OneBusAway