My first Ironhack challenge : Design Thinking applied to a mobility app
Since this is my first go at writing a post in Medium, I thought it was a good idea to provide a little information about myself first.
I’m and electronic and telecommunications engineer, that in the past year has become a UX enthusiast. Although my background is in technical support, I found that different aspects of my career align with the UX design world and that’s why I decided to further improve my education by entering this path.
This article is part of my training as an Ironhack student. It was my first design challenge and the end goal was to understand and put into practice, through the analysis of an app, the Design Thinking process.
Getting to know the customer
The App that was being analyzed is called Urban Go. Urban Go is Silicon Valley startup with the main goal of offering the cheapest and quickest public transportation route to their users. It’s a simple concept that is being replicated by different competitors in the market.
As a daily public transportation user (it’s been years since I’ve behind behind the wheel), I really rely on this type of applications. They simplify my day because I don’t have the need to plan ahead which buses or trains I have to take to get to a place.
With Urban Go, users select their starting point and where they want to go. As a result, the app shows the different routes they may take and the estimated time and cost of each of them.
Getting to know the users
At this point I needed to know more about the users of the app. It was important to empathize with them in order to understand their needs and this was done through an interview process.
I interviewed 5 friends, and asked the following questions:
- Do you use public or private transportation?
- If you are traveling abroad, which option do you prefer?
- Do you like purchasing your tickets in advance?. What about when you are in a different city that yours?
- Which mobility apps do you enjoy using?
- What are the pain points when using those apps?
To summarized the obtained answers, people prefer to use public transportation, even when they are traveling abroad because it allows them to save money. Regarding when was the best time to buy the tickets, most preferred to buy them the same day they were going to use them, but they really like the possibility of doing that online.
In relation to the use of mobility apps, most of them shared the love for Google maps, only con, is that most of the time you don’t have the option to purchase tickets, especially for urban routes.
Getting to know the pain points
And now, for the pain points, all the users shared the discomfort of having to buy multiple tickets to get to a destination. This is due to the fact that people have to get to the station, get into a queue and they might not be sure which tickets to purchase and to top that most of the times there is no one in sight that can help. Usually people can get help in the main stations but not in the rest and if you are traveling abroad and you don’t speak the local language, that gives an extra point of complexity.
Adding to that list of problems, users commented that sometimes the ticket vending machines were broken, so they have to figure out which was the alternate closest place where they could purchase the tickets.
Getting to design a solution
We needed a feature that provides the option to buy the tickets. In case the tickets can’t be purchased online (this happens with a lot of urban routes), then provide explanations of where the tickets can be purchased and which ones are the best options to buy. For example, when moving around Barcelona, recommend users to buy a T-10 card with which you get a better price per ticket and can be used for the different city public transportation methods.
From this idea, I prepared the following lo fi wireframes giving a very simple look of how this new feature should look on the Urban Go app.
As you can see from my lo fi wireframes, my goal was to represent my two main scenarios, having the option to purchase and not having the option. With the first scenario the users goes through a simple checkout flow to purchase tickets and with the second scenario, the user gets what I called the ‘Urban Go Tips’, little messages that advice users where to buy tickets and which is the recommended option to purchase.
When purchasing tickets through the app, users could collect points that will allow them to get future discounts, encouraging them this way to further use the app and create loyalty.
Getting to learn new things
Interviewing users really gave me a broader look of the problem and by doing so it made it easier for me to propose ideas on how to solve the things that were bothering them. My personal pain point was performing the interviews, because is complicated to find time were people are available.
