Ironhack’s Prework: Cecilia Schneider_Challenge 1

Citymapper is a public transport and navigation app which provides its users with all the information they need to get from point A to B. The app works by allowing you to compare information of all possible routes (including time, cost, and even calories burnt) to get you your destination in the way that best suits you. Its direct competitors include Google Maps, UrbanGo, and BatchGeo. The company’s goal is to make all cities “usable” through open data. Therefore, the app is especially useful when arriving in a new city as you are usually unfamiliar with how to get around.

Many of the fastest routes generated on Citymapper are often multimodal, meaning that a user needs to use various forms of transport. This could include the metro, busses, trains, or taxis, among others. Each year, new modes of public transport are being introduced, such as e-scooters, causing frustration among the app’s users as they are increasingly expected to purchase separate tickets on multiple platforms for just one journey.

In this article I will take you through the 4 steps of the Design Thinking process that I used in order to delve deeper into the frustrations of travellers and commuters, and come up with a creative solution to the problem.

STEP 1: EMPATHISE

Before being able to define the problem space, I prepared the following interview guide to help me understand the pain-points when users are purchasing transport tickets:

• Tell me about your general experience on public transport.
• How would you describe your experience purchasing transport tickets?
• When you are visiting a new city, how do you feel about using public transport?
• Explain your process of getting to your first destination (hotel, friend’s house etc.) after arriving in a new city.
• Tell me about a time that you purchased a ticket abroad and how it made you feel.
• Are there any aspects of buying a ticket which you find difficult?
• Taking into account the problems you mentioned (if any), what would be your ideal solution?
• Is there anything else you would like to add?

I then conducted 15 minute interviews on 5 commuters in order to better define the problem space.

STEP 2: DEFINE

My next move was to review and summarize my interview notes into the following main problems and insights:

MAIN PROBLEMS

• Not knowing the most economic ticket option “is it cheaper to buy a return journey or a day pass?”
• Confusion if too many ticket options “do I need to buy an off-peak or a super-off-peak ticket?”
• Complicated input systems “why do I need to input the exact destination, can’t I just buy any ticket?”
• Not knowing how to pay for/validate tickets “but I’ve already paid for my ticket, why do I need to go over there to validate it?”
• Having to collect pre-booked tickets “What was the point of booking before if I had to queue anyway?”

INSIGHTS

• Users like to avoid ticket machines and queues to save time.
• Users usually have positive experiences travelling by bus or metro within the centre of a city, but find ticket purchasing for trains and from airports more confusing.
• Users appreciate being able to use their debit cards to ‘tap-in’ instead of a ticket as it is quicker and simpler.
• Users prefer using machines rather than dealing with people, especially abroad.
• Language barriers can be an issue, but are normally easy to overcome.
• Users do not buy monthly pass as easier and less commitment to ‘pay as you go’.

Using these points, I then came up with a problem statement that would encompass everything that I learnt so far:

“Users are spending more time and money than they would like when purchasing travel tickets. They often get confused by too many options and frustrated at having to complete extra steps or payments that they were not expecting.”

STEP 3: IDEATE

Now that I had my problem space clearly defined, I decided to brainstorm to get all of my ideas down in one place.

Once that was done, I picked 3 possible solutions to sketch out before setting out to create my prototype.

The first solution allows you to buy all the tickets for your selected route in one go and combines them into a single ticket that you can add to your ‘wallet’ A pop-up is included in this sketch to remind the user of any further actions they may need to take. This solves the user problems by providing users with the best ticket option and allowing them to purchase them all in one touch of a button, saving time and energy.

The second solution incorporates a ‘City Card’ feature which allows you to simply tap your phone to a reader as you go rather than having to actively purchase a ticket through the app. This solution saves the user the most amount of time and effort, however is less feasible than the others as not all transport systems will support this payment method.

The third solution asks the user a series of simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions in order to determine the most economic ticket option. This solution is the most feasible as it only informs the user of what ticket to buy and how (rather than purchasing via the app), but does not save the user much time.

I decided to move forward with my first sketch as it is feasible and saves the user so much time and confusion, which were the two biggest pain-points to come up in the interview stage.

STEP 4: PROTOTYPE

Armed with my previous sketches, I set out to produce a low-fidelity prototype as seen below:

Check out the video too to see how it works!

This was my first time putting Design Thinking into action and I can really see the value in using this process. My favourite part was the ‘Define’ stage, as it became very clear how a simple conversation can lead to better, more useful and innovative ideas. I had a lot of fun drawing up my ideas and seeing how they work and look forward to learning much more about Design Thinking and UX design!