Ironhack’s Prework: Challenge1. Design Thinking.
CityMapper is a transit app where one can find, on top of the typical GPS mapping, how to go from one point to another using public transportation. There is a challenge because, often, those travels involve using several means with different tickets (paper, card, ticket, digital…) that need to be purchased at different outlets and that may have different price models (fixed fares, by zones, by distance, by number of stations…).
A new feature that lets users buy tickets in advance is proposed and it needs to be designed with the Design Thinking principles in mind; that is, putting the final user first and foremost.
- EMPATHIZE. THE INTERVIEWS
To put the potential users first, a series of interviews have been conducted with people from different target groups. The aim is to find what do they want and need the most, what do they dislike and fear, and what are the potential pain points of this feature.
The interviews are relaxed talks rather than rigid Q&A’s, but there are some questions that will be put on the table:
- Have you travelled abroad? Do you travel abroad often?
- Do you use your cell phone for your travels? How do you find your ways?
- Are there differences when you do frequent travels (hometown, commuting) or occasional (abroad, tourism, etc)? Do you use the same type of transportation?
- What are your main concerns when using public transportation?
- How would you feel buying tickets on an app?
- How would you like to have your tickets? (single QR, one QRs for every transit, NFC, plastic card…)
There is a noticeably divisive point for the potential users: whether the app will be used on daily or frequent travels (commuting) or on occasional ones (abroad, tourism, business…) This division will be very present in many of the answers.
Another relevant issue is Trust. Whether the app can be trusted or not when purchasing tickets. Can users trust those tickets will be valid at all transports, that the prices will be equal or lower than the ones found on local points of sale and that there will not be fees or commissions that rise those prices, that they will not be left stranded somewhere because a QR code is not admitted or recognized… The two eldest interviewees even went as far as to say that being able to receive PDFs with the tickets by email (like plane tickets) would be a key factor. And the eldest of them all said She would only trust in a big-name company (Google, Amazon, Apple…)
But if there was something that everybody mentioned was the need for simplicity. You are working on a thousand details for your next trip, or you are in a faraway city, and the last thing you want is having to fight some app’s interface or functionality. It must be clear, simple and to work every time.
2. DEFINE. FINDING THE PROBLEM
The most recurring needs are way beyond the app’s software and are challenges of disrupting magnitude: Unifying tickets for different companies in different cities, countries and even cultures. Allowing digital tickets for buses or tramways in remote cities that have only relied on paper so far. Creating an improved version of the famous Japan Rail Pass for anywhere would be a milestone. To hinder it with an obtrusive or confusing app would be terrible.
3. IDEATE
One way to address most of the issues the users found was to design a dual solution, one that separated frequent travels from occasional. That would allow for a finer tuning of the app in regards of daily commutes. Define subscriptions (like monthly tickets to be paid and renewed regularly), prepaid options (money is withdrawn according to number of travels made and its length or duration), alarms for service alterations (accidental or planned beforehand) or for arriving vehicles (your 7.45 am bus is three minutes away from the bus stop). The dual option would also allow for more detail on occasional trips (sightseeing spots near the route, bad weather alerts, orientation tips for difficult transfers).
Another way would be the opposite: Let the traveller buy tickets and have them at hand without even noticing. How? Trying to implement a classic shopping cart experience integrated in the very same UI, without changing it at all. This approach would ignore some very useful features but would focus on streamlining the buying of tickets and respecting the original design of the app.
4. PROTOTYPE
5. CONCLUSION
Dieter Rams, the german design deity behind Braun and Vitsœ products and who wrote the Ten Principles of Good Design, had a motto that summed up all philosophy: Less, But Better. The idea was that by removing everything that was not indispensable in a product, what remained would be only the essential, its best possible version. The way to arrive to that essential state is by working long and hard.
Likewise, arriving to this prototype has required long hours of work, balancing functions and forms, analysing what had to be in and what could be left out. Hopefully, the outcome will be as satisfactory as the process to arrive to it.
