Find out when the next bus or streetcar will arrive near you

Overview

Rocket Radar was a company I co-founded with two engineers to solve a simple problem: knowing when the next streetcar was coming. In Toronto, riders had no reliable way to check arrival times — they just showed up and waited, sometimes in brutal winter conditions. We were the first transit app in Toronto to use real-time transit data, and we went from a sketch on paper to a fully launched app on the App Store in 60 days.

Design

The visual design was directly inspired by the interior of Toronto streetcars — the brushed metal surfaces, glowing destination displays, and industrial textures. This was the era of skeuomorphism, and I embraced it fully, translating those real-world materials into the UI with metallic drum selectors and bold red LED-style numerals.

The interaction design was deliberately minimal. You launched the app and it immediately told you when the next streetcar or bus was arriving where you were standing. One tap to change direction, but for most people it required no taps at all — it just worked.

Impact

We were covered extensively in local newspapers, TV stations, and on the radio, and grew to tens of thousands of users. More than anything, Rocket Radar was the first project where I had built something myself and could see its impact on people’s lives — watching strangers use an app I’d designed to catch their streetcar. It’s what got me hooked on product design.