B Line PULSE

Halli Brunkella Thiel, Zak Menkel, Joseph King, Gordon Mueller, and Corey Paganucci

RapidRide

A mobile game visualizes daily data from a community of transit riders.

Public transit is a communal experience, yet many people turn inward while riding the bus—reading, listening to headphones, gazing out the window. What if strangers sharing a transit experience could somehow share their unspoken interests and feelings?

Created by a team at Hornall Anderson, B LINE PULSE provided an opportunity for riders of King County Metro Transit’s RapidRide B Line to learn about their community and create something together. PULSE offered daily prompts based on weekly themes. Responses—a series of selections on spectrum—became data points, along with their locations, times of day, and more. Together these data points informed a unique visual representation for each rider, which was then plotted alongside those of other riders to create an evolving collective artwork in real time. All data was kept strictly anonymous, but riders could check the “pulse” of their B Line community on a given topic.

Was it a mobile app? A game? Public art? An information graphic? A social experiment? B LINE PULSE intentionally blurred the lines between these mediums to shape an experience reflective of our times. The temporary initiative was meant to shift understanding of public and private, physical and virtual.

Founded in Seattle and London in 1982, Hornall Anderson was a groundbreaking brand and graphic design firm for nearly four decades, serving clients such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Alaska Airlines, Weyerhaeuser, the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, and Virgin Atlantic. In 2020, the firm was absorbed by the international creative agency Sid Lee.

About the Location

RapidRide

Launched in 2009 with the creation of the A Line, RapidRide is King County Metro’s premier transit service, a network of limited-stop bus routes that provide frequent trips in six major transit corridors covering 64 miles across the county—with additional lines scheduled to debut in the years ahead. Different from standard bus service, RapidRide lines…

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