BusTap: A Real-Time Bus Tracking Android Application

Commuters and tourists in the Philippines heavily rely on buses as transportation links in cities and provinces, yet an issue that remains unsolved is the lack of real-time bus information readily available for bus passengers and operators. Victory Liner, Inc. is one of the country's largest provincial bus companies. However, their bus schedules are still drastically affected by unpredictable conditions, resulting to passengers cluelessly waiting for their buses' arrival. Hence, this paper explores the development of a real-time bus- tracking Android application called “BusTap” to address the gap in knowledge in the public bus transport service in Victory Liner Baguio using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. With the use of Scrum methodology, the researchers were able to identify the necessary information requirements needed to create BusTap, determine the application's architectural framework, design and develop its features, as well as measure the app's extent of usability by floating Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of use (USE) questionnaires to Baguio City bus passengers and Victory Liner Baguio drivers. It was concluded that: a) the identified information requirements were vital in developing the application's features, b)using a 4+1 architectural view model was helpful for project cohesion and organization, c) the features identified were crucial in eliminating the gap in knowledge between the bus operator and bus passengers, and d) based from the computed overall mean levelof agreement of 6.46 and 6.48 from the evaluation of passenger respondents and driver respondents respectively, BusTap users strongly agree that BusTap is a useful, easy to use, and easy to learn mobile application that satisfies its users' needs.