Urban Go & goodwill for touristic pride.

Urban Go is a service that facilitates mobility for urbanites & urban travellers. The mission of Urban Go is to help urban travellers optimise their itinerary by calculating all the possibilities & giving them access to filters such as price, time, walking distance etc. The essence of the service is to provide the right information in real time to make the best out of any transport network. The service needs to be available immediately and on the go, that’s why they developed a mobile application.
Today, Urban Go are looking to bring improvements through new features based on user feedback, especially concentrating on foreign travellers using urban mobility abroad.
Urban transport problem identification
Through 6 user interviews we raised mobility problems on a daily basis and during city travel situations.
For example, locals renewing their subscription card monthly end up queuing on the first of each month up to one hour. Other problems arrose like anticipating trafic disruptions, line-works, new routes etc. But, what came out strongly is that users actually expect these to be informed & facilitated by their transport operators. Even though they appreciate PART of the information being available on an itinerary calculator or optimiser.
For the sake of the exercise, we wanted to focus on one part of the audience to design a solution adapted to a more precise target. The chosen audience are travellers visiting foreign cities. Confused. Our urban tourists are confused. Often finding themselves in situations of distress when visiting a new city. Especially when using public transport; but taxis too.
The distress is mostly linked to the usage of urban transportation rather than multi-modal systems or the multiplicity of tickets.

The main paint points are the following — illustrated by verbatims:
- Feeling lost: Where to go?
“When I travel far or don’t speak the language I feel lost, I don’t know where to go, what the system is and how to use it.”
“Being lost in a foreign city is really weird, it’s like being a kid without any adults to guide me and not daring to ask anyone what do to. It’s pretty infantilising.”
- Feeling alone: Where to buy?
“I don’t know where the counters are. Tourist info desk? Inside the transport itself? At the gates?”
“I’d like to buy at the counter but the queue is always really long so I end up struggling on my own at the machine.”
“I never know if I should buy in advance or directly when I need to use a transport.”
- Feeling hesitant: How to purchase (machine, counter, app):
“The purchase systems are always different, and most cities don’t have one day tourist passes.”
“Which tickets are usable where? Is it one per journey?”“Even when I get the option of a one day pass, its usually really expensive and I will only doing 2 trips in the day.”
- Feeling stupid: Using the ticket (insert/tap/punch etc.)
“I think the worse for me is looking like a complete idiot tapping a card that is supposed to be inserted or vice versa.”
“God I feel sooo bad when I’m blocking everyone behind because I don’t know where to put the damn ticket.”
“I’m always flagged tourist as soon as I take the bus, tram or metro, trying to make out which ticket is what and where to insert it”
“I never know when my ticket is used, I try 3 or 4 before finding a new one, its embarrassing.”
- Feeling unnerved: Bring me true optimisation
“I’d like to know the shortcuts and where to place myself on the train.”
“I always take the wrong exist and end up walking double the distance.”
Funnily enough, while interviewing I noticed that usage isn’t necessarily a “tourist problem”. Some city newcomers or daily users are sometimes lost within their own system (what zone, ticket validity, closing times, lost card, were is the platform located etc.).
But I said I would focus on tourists 🗺️
Framing the challenge to tackle
I decided to focus more specifically on the the where & how, which are the biggest sources of emotional distress. Through these interviews I came to realise that when abroad the usage of tickets is the bigger pain point rather than the multiple operators and systems within one city. If you know how to use each (where to buy and how to use), it helps optimise the trip on the whole. The main issue isn’t so much about having everything at hand, about creating an embedded system that on-boards real time data, payment facilities and delivers a seamless ticket usable for the whole calculated itinerary. Which was my initial thought before interviewing users. The issue is about concentrating on the emotional pain-points and transforming them into ease and — possibly joy.
The feeling of knowing the system vs. other tourists who are struggling, generates a sense of pride.
Giving access to guidance
The mobile app already integrates an itinerary calculator & generator, users can filter by price, time, walking distance and then choose among different modes of transport (taxi, bicycle, public transport etc.). That’s a norm.
This user path is fluid, within mobile habits and people are used to inputting where they are going and choosing the preferred way of getting there based on personal criteria.
The new features sit on the “selected itinerary” : where you find the travel itinerary map & chosen way of transportation. They are 2 new clickables that help the user find a sense of space and guide usage.

The two features are part of the same solution but appear at two different moments of the user journey, covering the essential moments of distress.
“Where to buy” appears at the beginning of the user journey: once the itinerary is chosen and the user wants to know what tools are needed to start their journey.

“How to use” appears in the midst of the user journey, covering a peak of emotional strain: I don’t want to block everyone (including myself) & look stupid.

Learning process
That ideation & solution seeking isn’t about trying to solve all the problems at once and not solving individual problems properly. I tend to look at the set of problems and concentrate on finding a catch-all type of solution. Bad idea.
I realise that the essence of UXD is to understand all the problems and finding solutions to each one at a time. Each one at a time. Which leads to eliminating some & shedding new light to others. Ah, the iteration process!
Empathising is key to understanding not only the real problems but what causes true frustration. Some things are problems but don’t generate an emotional pain-point. And, when we skip this step we tend to miss what truly gets to people.
