Ironhack’s Prework_Challenge 1: Citymapper
Designing a ticketing solution for the famous app through Design Thinking.
Citymapper, Technology for Mobility in the City
Using GPS and route planning applications to navigate, especially when abroad, has become common practice for many travelers and public transportation users. In big cities like New-York, Hong-Kong or London, transportation options are thriving. But between metro, tram and train, bus, bike, scooters, two-wheeled vehicles, taxis, car-hailing and car-sharing services, it’s easy to get lost in the urban jungle. Not to mention how they may differ from one city to another.
Here is Citymapper’s added value: making cities usable. Over a near decade, the app has built some of the greatest technology in mobility: multimodal routing for public and private transportation with estimated time and cost, real-time traffic information, positioning recommendation for smooth transfer, CO2 footprint stats, burnt calories meter, agenda synch, turn-by-turn navigation… and so on, in currently more than 100 cities worldwide. And according to the London-based company, this is just the beginning.
The Challenge
My first challenge as an Ironhacker is to **create a feature for the app that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels**. To that end, I’m going to use the Design Thinking methodology, which is a user-centered and human-focused approach to problem solving that can be divided into five main steps, as shown below.
So here we go.
Step 1: Empathize to understand users needs, contexts and pain points
Competitive benchmark and user research
First things first, I looked at Citymapper and its main competitors (Google Maps, Moovit, Easy Way and local public transportation apps) to immerse myself in the topic. I checked which features they propose, how they position themselves in the urban app ecosystem and what are their latest news and updates. I also consulted Citymapper users’ reviews in Google Play and App stores to gather information about the app and focus on potential pain points.
Then, I was ready to conduct user research and generate insights from our target audience: public transport users and travelers. As we are interested to know more about who our users are, what their overall public transportation experience is like — especially when abroad — what goals, expectations and pain points they may have — especially during the buying and ticketing process, I asked 5 public transport users* to tell me about their recent experiences in their home country and when traveling abroad (in-depth interviewing).
*Respondents are aged 29 to 46 years old, live in France, Belgium and Canada, enjoy traveling and are rather tech-friendly, work in various fields such as healthcare, finance, publishing, marketing and digital consulting. Interviews were 30 to 45 minutes long.
The interview guide included the following questions (non-exhaustive list):
Can you tell me about your public transportation experience in your daily life?
Can you tell me about a recent trip you’ve made abroad and how it went with local transports there?
How did you navigate in the city?
Any troubles or frustrations as far as public transports and channels are concerned?
Particularly when having to pay for your transport tickets?
Which tools/apps did you use there and why?
What do you like in these apps? And conversely, what do you not like?
What would be the perfect transport / mobility app when abroad?
Have you seen exemplary initiatives when abroad as far as public transportation and mobility are at stake?
Here are the main insights I got:
- Traveling abroad takes a certain anticipation and preparation level not to be / feel lost
- It can be stressful, source of frustration and time-consuming
- Respondents also mentioned the lack of visibility of existing transportation solutions and ticketing offers, the complexity of navigating through different channels, the lack of clarity, transparency and convenience when navigating in cities
Main pain points are:
>> Related to physical ticketing machines: they are not super user friendly, confusing even; often outdated visually, or when they only accept local currency (banknotes and coins) / don’t work with contactless payment; may be broken as well; can cause queues and delays
>> Related to the absence of regular staff helping travelers and the decreasing number of station desks
>> Related to the ticketing options and formats: paper titles can get demagnetised or get lost; we never know whether they need to be stamped when there is no validating terminals around; choosing a ticket that fits one’s very needs for the trip, for the day, for the week or more is difficult as transport options are not explicit or not detailed enough; validity deadlines and zones are not always mentioned, which doesn’t help to be in good standing when controlled; tarification is opaque and multiple, maybe too much since it can generate added complexity
>> Related to existing apps and tools: many are dedicated to a single or to a limited number of travel modes, which is not convenient for multimodal trips; they all look different, are more or less well thought out and might not be mobile friendly; they can also feel cold or purely informative and old, are sometimes invaded with ads or redirect links
>> Related to language barrier, invasion of privacy and absence of available internet connection (wifi or 4G/5G)
Step 2: Define to make sense of previous insights and to propose a problem statement
Given what I learnt previously and on which aspects I’ve been challenged by the school, here is my problem statement, focusing on the user’s point of view:
“Public transport users, especially when abroad, have trouble buying transport tickets by different channels serenely and efficiently because they are facing multiple pricing, ticketing and purchasing options.”
Indeed, solving seamless payment for transport remains one of the biggest opportunities in mobility.
Step 3: Ideate to come up with multiple ideas solving the problem
Now that we are clear about the problem to tackle, the goal is to come up with as many solutions as possible, based on our previous findings and focusing on the users pain points during the ticket buying process. I did a bit of doodling here (see below).
I thought of: rechargeable transport pass, materialized or dematerialized, contactless / pre-registered payment by credit card, with NFC technology or not, ticket managing feature through another app, bundle pass subscription and e-wallet. All of this documenting myself through the internet to develop every concept.
Step 4: Prototype to think harder, better, faster, stronger
Once I was done with ideating, I picked the “best” option I could think of, meaning it fully solved the problem we stated previously and was the most “ideal” to propose a very useful, smooth and efficient payment solution with seamless integration to the app.
Here is what I can tell you about the solution I prototyped:
- What?: A feature giving access to all types of available transport tickets and multimodal bundles in the city (explicitly detailed and with a user-friendly information architecture)
- When?: After selecting one’s route through the route planning feature (when users don’t know how to go and need to book a ticket, see below user flow n°1) OR directly when connecting to the app, from the welcome page (when users already know how to go but still need to book a ticket quickly and easily, see below user flow n°2)
- How?: Allowing payment directly in the app (with pre-registered bank card in the user’s app account)
- Where?: Resulting in NFC tickets / transport titles in the user’s phone with clear instructions for use and validity details (deadlines and authorized areas)
1User flow *when users don’t know how to go from point A to point B and need to book a ticket for their trip*:
2User flow *when users already know how to go from point A to point B but still need to book a ticket for their trip*:
Step 5: Test and learn
As a prototype is usually made to interact with potential real users, or fellow designers, the last phase of Design Thinking methodology is to evaluate the prototype in an iterative kind of way. Which means testing the prototype over and over to confirm the relevance of the problem statement but also to highlight any design flaws before creating the final product.
Testing the prototype wasn’t part of this challenge but feel free to share any feedback or comment! They are very welcome.
Key Takeaways
This case study was a very useful training exercise to understand the magnitude of the Design Thinking methodology. No need to rush, every step has its perks and making connections between each and every one of them allows thoroughness and efficiency. Before starting, understanding the scope of the project is important to know who is the target audience to interview and which type of questions should be asked to get insights. Reformulating insights in a very simple way is usually a great help to make sense of everything. Narrowing the problem statement is crucial to bring impactful improvements. Sketching and prototyping help think better and test ideas as we draw them. Testing enables you to learn more about your solution and your users. I’m eager to do it next time!
Many thanks for reading! :)
