Case study: Design thinking in practice
On top of the crowds, the noise and that dusty smell in the air, purchasing public transports tickets can be a real labyrinth should your travel require more than that regular ticket. Add to that being abroad, in a completely foreign city where you can’t read nor speak the language and well, you can already feel your heart pumping and your hands getting moist just imagining yourself in that situation, right?
So, you would think that most travel apps have that feature where you can just say where you want to go and they’ll have the route and ticket prices planned out for you. Well, not exactly. At least not for the Citymapper app.
If you’re unfamiliar with the app, Citymapper is a public transit app and mapping service which displays transport options, usually with live timing, between any two locations in a supported city.
Citymapper covers 72 urban locations across the world. Pretty neat. But it doesn’t tell you anything about ticket prices or how to get them.
Let’s dig deeper into that pain point
I’ve talked with 5 users of public transports to understand this area a bit better. All of the interviewees are public transport users, have used public transport abroad and are aged between 30 and 70 years old. They were all adamant in making sure they were purchasing the right ticket (because no one likes a fine, and even less in a foreign country) but didn’t want to battle the crowds at the vending machine.
For the majority of the interviewees, looking up online how to get the right ticket was a struggle as:
- They were unsure where to find that information online,
- They were mindful of their data consumption,
- They were wary of being stationary in the station for too long as they were afraid of thieves.
The more senior interviewees mentioned that they would often arrange these details prior to leaving their hotel room to avoid that state of vulnerability and confusion once at the station.
Two interviewees mentioned that the official travel apps in their local countries already include a feature allowing users to purchase tickets from the app. However, they would often require either a local pass, NFC technology or the payment method was not ideal. That is, it would require a local bank account or a credit card number — meaning taking your credit card out in a busy train station. Not ideal.
What would be ideal though is being able to purchase a ticket online, right from the app and that way avoiding crowds and scary vending machines. And clearly, that is possible as some apps already sport that feature.
Let’s brainstorm ideas on what solutions could work
Whilst the audience for public transports is literally everyone, travel apps are mostly used by a tech-savvy audience. It is therefore likely that they are already users of the existing online payment methods out there, e.g. PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay. So these should be an option.
However, as we have uncovered from the user interviews, data consumption can be a concern. We should therefore offer a solution that is user-friendly, consumes little data and ensures the whole process is quick. We should therefore also include an option to add a credit/debit card, as well as an option to add money directly on the app wallet — to ensure users who don’t have a credit/debit card at hand or at all can still proceed with the payment.
Now that we have the payment method nailed down, let’s think about what happens after. The easiest way would be for a barcode or a QR code to be generated once the purchase is complete. As we go ahead with this approach, we make the assumption that the city is equipped with such technology.
The assumptions that we have made for both the ways of payment (online payment methods and credit/debit card) and the barcode/QR code are not a problem since the scope for this design challenge is very open:
Users already have all their information on the app — no need to login or enter data when paying or checking out.
Forget about security issues and other limitations.
Here is the lo-fi prototype for this solution:
As the user’s data is already entered and loaded, there is no need to enter any credit card details nor connect the PayPal/Apple Pay/Google Pay accounts, saving a lot of time and data. Therefore the whole process can be completed in 4 quick steps, once the desired route has been chosen.
Once the payment has been completed, the user has the choice to make the code available offline, should they not have any reception if they need to use it again.
Learnings
The UX Design process is paramount to ensure all possible scenarios have been taken into account and therefore ensuring the product answers the users’ needs.
This was my first UX Design exercise and whilst I enjoyed working on it, the lack of limitations made a lot of things possible. It is clear that thorough primary research, deep understanding of consumer needs and empathy are of paramount importance for big and small design thinking processes.
Thanks for reading!
This article was written as part of the the UX/UI Design Bootcamp I followed in January — March 2021 at Ironhack.
