Let’s continue on my journey with the first challenge “Design Thinking”. When I hear this term in my mind I was going to create something innovative…but it’s just one part of the process.
The company
Urban Go is a public transit and mapping startup based in Silicon Valley. Their goal is to solve the problems of urban mobility by offering the quickest and cheapest public and private transport routes to their users.
The problem
When you are abroad or changing states, areas in your country, complications begin once you want to purchase public transports’ tickets. Users have to buy distinct tickets to go to their destination and also they have to face queues, out of order equipments and different range of pricing.
To solve this problem we have to create a feature where users can purchase all their tickets on one channel.
Audience
All users who are traveling, aged between 16–50 years old who own a smartphone and travel in the 39 cities where the application operates.
Client’s competition
Apps on the French Market for transportation and results of the interview
Direct competitors: SNCF, RATP, Google Maps
Indirect competitors: Waze, Uber, Kapten, Citygo, Velib
Tone
Fast, users need to gain time in purchasing. Simple access to the tickets bought and Convenient to validate their tickets.
What is design thinking?
Design thinking is a method used to find solutions to complex problems. All organizations adopt this process by finding ideas to answer to human needs.
The 5 stages of design Thinking Process
Empathize
First stage, understand the problem we trying to solve for customers or users, to find humans needs by observing and place ourselves in their shoes in order to develop a particular service or product.
The user’s interview
Do you use transportation abroad?
Which apps are you using during your travels?
How often do you use this type of application?
What is your experience when you purchase abroad?
Which digital methods do you know?
What do you think about pay by phone method?
What advantages do you see by using your phone as transportation ticket?
If you have a feature to purchase transportation ticket directly on your app, will you be interested?
Results
Most of the user find complicated to buy transportation tickets abroad and would like to buy online and they all agreed to use their phone as a transportation ticket would be practical, fast and environmentally friendly.
Ideate
Prototype
Final thoughts
When you “design thinking”, you have to put yourself in the user’s place to understand his/her needs and find the best solution to not just solve their problems but makes their lives easier. Let’s not forget we can always improve our design in the future.
A quick example Sonic design