Case Study: Confident Commuter

Client: Liberty Victoria’s Rights Advocacy Project

2.5 Week Sprint

Synopsis

Liberty Victoria’s Rights Advocacy Project also known as RAP is a community of lawyers and activists working to advance human rights in Australia. In 2016 RAP launched MykiFines.org.au. The website aims to help users to understand their rights and options when they are found to be travelling without a valid Myki card.

On January 2017, the Victorian government scrapped on-the-spot penalty fares and introduced policies around reviewing reports of non-compliance. RAP gave us the task to update the MykiFines website to:

• Ensure that it reflected the new regulatory scheme
• Improve its usability and sustainability
• Continue educating the public about their rights and options when faced with a public transport infringement.

Constraints:

1. We could not rely on the accuracy of the existing website as MykiFines.org.au was built developed based on client assumptions with no prior using research or testing.
2. Tight budget constraint: Our proposed solution not only needed to deliver the requirements of the brief but also had to be financially viable to develop.

The Team

Project Journey

As opposed to following a cookie cutter approach where we would have followed the Double Diamond framework step by step, our team decided to take a tactical approach towards the project.

The following diagram outlines the process flow of our project. The highlighted sections are parts of the project where I was either solely responsible for or was working in collaboration with another team member to produce the desired outcomes.

In the first week of our project, our team undertook a Design Sprint where we:

1. Conducted client research to understand the operations of the organisation, their pains and goals.
2. Completed comparative analysis on organisations and websites that operate in the awareness and education space to see what we could learn from them.

As the saying goes:

“Good poets borrow, great poets steal”

3. Using google forms, we designed, tested and released a user survey, leveraging our own individual networks, the wider General Assembly and Client networks.

4. Defined our Problem Statement:

5. Conducted a Design Thinking Workshop where our each member of our team designed and presented their proposed solution. We then explained our concepts, voted on the ideas and determined what our hypothesises were.

We made the assumption that there were 3 phases in the commuter journey:

1. Before : Commuter has yet to engage with an Authorised Officer (A.O. a.k.a Ticket Inspector). The level of knowledge the commuter has about his/her rights at this stage will impact their behaviour in the following stages. This part of the journey could be targeted with awareness campaigns.
2. During: Commuter has an invalid Myki card and is in the process of engaging with an A.O. We made the assumption that this is the stage where the commuter has the greatest point and has the highest need for help.
3. After: Commuter has received an infringement letter. The commuter wants information customised to their situation and should they choose to appeal, further information to assist them with the process.

6. In order to test our hypothesises, I moved into drawing some basic wire-frames and from there built a low-fidelity digital prototype using Adobe XD. User testing was conducted the next day.

7. The initial user testing validated our assumptions and overall concept but more importantly showed our where the gaps were in the usability, copy-writing and interface design of our low-fidelity prototype.

Research Insights

Survey Data

Drawing on my data analysis skills, I was able to generate a few interesting insights from the survey data, here are a few:

1. High Percentage of Human Error: Human error contributed to 56% of the reasons for our commuters did not have a valid Myki card, such as forgetting to touch on, top up, or was running late so they did not touch on/top up. Only 13%-20% of the reasons were due to external factors such as a faulty top up machine, faulty Myki scanner or the tram/train being too crowded to touch on.
2. Perceived Unjust in Fare rates: 31% of respondents who sometimes travelled without a Myki card chose to do so intentionally. They perceived their commute to be short and felt that it was unfair to have to pay the full daily fare (I will talk more about this later).
3. High Mental and Emotional Stress: Over 70% of respondents who were stopped by an Authorised Officer felt negative about their experience, citing feelings of intimidation, anxiety, humiliation, anger and defeated.
4. Low Rate of Appeal: Of the 52% of respondents who received a fine, only 20% chose to appeal the fine when they received an infringement letter, with less than 10% success.
5. Low Awareness of MykiFines website: Only 11% were aware of the website, 89% of our respondents had never heard of it.

User Interview

From the data analysis, I went on to interview respondents who agreed to be contacted after the survey. The user interviews helped us to validate our initial ideas but also allowed our team to better understand their story, their pains and goals which was not captured in the survey forms.

Mindsets

As a team we utilised the Affinity Mapping technique to organise the information from the survey data and user interviews. From this information, we found that there were 3 distinct commuter mindsets.

Emotional Journey

Based on insights from the user interviews, I designed an emotional journey map which helped our Client to understand the pain and challenges experienced by each Mindset as they went through their journey and also how our solution caters to each stage of the journey.

User Testing, Ideation & Prototyping

With our overall concept validated through our initial user testing, survey data and user interview insights, our team utilised the remaining time to conduct further iterations, user testing and explored potential solutions we could test out for the Before Stage.

Confident Commuter Digital Prototype

The development of the digital prototype was intentionally scaled to mid-fidelity because:

1. We wanted to focus on testing the functionality and concept, minimising Client attachment to the final look
2. We are collaborating with the Client’s designer to build the high-fidelity digital prototype.

https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/Q7ED7QJDK#/screens/262692068

Before Phase

During Phase

After Phase

Moving Forward

We are currently in the process of assisting the client with further user testing. Moving forward, we will collaborate with the Client’s designer and web developer to build the final product. The client has agreed to adopt the project name “Confident Commuter” as the domain name and will begin building the new website between Dec and early January.