Ready, Steady, go.
Hello everyone,
My name is Sarah and I’m just starting to take my first dips into the UX/UI design world.
Contributing to this community helps us grow and make new discoveries and that’s why I’ll be sharing as much of my journeyt as I can. Sharing experiences is part of the learning process.
I’m about to begin an UX/UI bootcamp at IronhackMadrid. I’m very excited to begin the course. It was kind of a surprise when I got it. Initially I was planning to enter the April course but since there was a last minute cancelation I was able to enter the course starting next Monday.
I have been working on my prework challenges all week long and in a bit of a rush, but I’m enjoying them quite a lot (Just wish I had more time). For today, let me show you one of my first training exercises.
Design Thinking
Empathize-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test
As a newbie I’m trying to set my brain on a new methology. When designing there are some things that come natural, intuitively. The challenge is to shape this process and optimize creativity.
On this challenge we had to come with a solution for a public transit and mapping startup based in Silicon Valley, UrbanGo, and start training on the Design Thinking methology.
The main pain point UbanGo was facing on this challenge was the different amount of public transport tickets the users had to purchase and the annoyance the buying process may pose to them. Also, the change of currency and language when traveling abroad, which can complicate pricing and purchasing the right ticket.
To summarize, we had to find a way to facilitate the purchase and management of all tickets needed to follow UrbanGo suggested routes.
Once the problem had been defined it was time to do some research and find out what our client’s competition was doing and how users felt about public transport and how they managed their resources.
Since I had very little time to conduct this research I came up with a Google Form questionnaire that allowed me to quickly interview the most people on the shortest time. (The more the merrier, I know, but I had to work with what I had. Thank you to everybody that filled the questionnaire :) I really appreciate it!)
This are some of the results of the questionnaire and my conclusions:
Most people frequently use public transport in their cities and most of them would rather purchase some kind of travel pass. Nevertheless, there’s not a great difference between the number of users that would rather not use a travel pass from the ones that do.
The price of the travel pass is the main reason why some people choose not to buy one. Only the ones that save money by purchasing it do. Meaning the time spent on purchasing individual tickets is less relevant than the economic factor.
When moving around their city, locals focuse mostly on the time a route takes and if they would have to make any connections along the journey. When traveling abroad, the time factor is still decisive, while the connections on the route seem less important as soon as the route either saves them money or takes them someplace new to explore along the way.
When traveling abroad users check transit routes mainly on GoogleMaps or the internet. While at home, most of them use local public transport apps to check routes but also prices and departure and arrival times, others use GoogleMaps and Moovit.
The majority purchase their tickets at the stations, since most of public transport don’t allow online purchases, but they buy tickets online whenever they have the chance. A crucial aspect of this question is that, some of the cities our users are from, are already working on implementing online purchasing and mobile payment(contactless/on site).
When traveling abroad the majority of the users acquire a travel pass only if by doing so they save some kind of money. If not, only a small percentage of them get one. Whitout any economical advantages, users on a foreign country or city prefer to buy their tickets individually.
As we see, when traveling abroad, people tend to focus on saving money and time. Only if the chances are they will see someplace interesting, they are willing to invest their time on taking detours or longer routes.
In order to save time, purchasing tickets online is a great resource which users turn to whenever available. Travel passes, on the other hand, are a money saving resource rather than time saving.
In conclusion, when coming to route duration, users value time the most, but at the time of purchasing tickets, they would rather save money than time.
Ideate
Once we understood how our client and users felt and the main pain points were defined, it was time to ideate a solution.
Our job now was to sketch out a wireframe that would lay the foundation for a long term project. This is what I came up with:
The idea was to make the purchase of all the tickets for one route as simple and fast as possible, as well as to make emphasis on the prices and time for each rout.
In order to achieve that the best idea I came up with was to make every online purchase available remotely from the UrbanGo app. This way, users would have all their tickets available with one click. I also created a wallet section were users would be able to access all of their tickets and travel passes directly from the app and divided by routes if desired.
This is as far as we go for now, since this is a training challenge.
I really, really, enjoyed working on this. Feeling how the pieces start coming together and the energy burst of creating and designing new ideas is phenomenal.
I expect that this journey into UX/UI design will only get better as I learn. I’m so excited!
Thank you for reading. I’ll keep you posted! :)
Screen to screen
If you want to take a closer look to my sketch here is a screen to screen walkthrough:
In the homepage the user would be able to check their wallet, search for a new route, access their profile info and check notifications such as strikes or travel pass expiration dates coming soon, among others.
When consulting for directions the user would be suggested a few options. Each route would display every factor that may influence the user’s choice.
Once the user had made their choice, a detailed breakdown of the tickets needed for the selected route would display on the app.
Here the user would be able to select which of the tickets they wanted to buy and how many of them. If they already had one of those tickets, they would be notified. Purchase choices available, such as travel passes (specifying if they would save any money), would be displayed for each ticket. If any of the tickets were not available for online purchase the user could set a reminder for a desired date and time, so they won’t forget to buy those tickets later on.
Once the tickets have been selected, the user could proceed with the purchase by pressing the buy button. The UrbanGo app would then make all the purchases from third parties and upload the tickets to the wallet.
By naming the route the user would group all the tickets needed for the journey in one category. E.g.: HOME-WORK
From their wallet, users would be able to access all their travel passes, as well as check all the information regarding expiration dates or number of tickets left on each travel pass. The ‘routes’ category would display all of their saved routes. A section for all of the tickets regardless of the route would also be available.
If you access the ‘routes’ section, every route the user would have saved would be available as an independent section. E.g.: Home-work, My friend’s house, That lovely village or any disposable routes.
By clicking on a route, users would be able to see the route’s especifications and also the detailed ticket breakdown once again. From here they would check which of those tickets have been used and buy them again when needed. If new route options were available since the route was saved by the user, a notification would appear by the route’s name, so the user can review their choices.
Routes could be deleted or renamed any time.
