Improving Urban Mobility thanks to Design Thinking
As a UX Designer, it is essential to put user needs at the core of the thinking process while meeting business goals. The user-centered approach has been conceptualised through the well-known methodology of Design Thinking.
IDEO, an international design and consulting firm known as a pioneer of human-centered design, defines the process as follows:
“Design thinking is a deeply human process that taps into abilities we all have but get overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. It relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, and to construct ideas that are emotionally meaningful as well as functional.”
The Design Thinking cycle has 5 phases: empathise, define, ideate, prototype, test — detailed in the image below:
That being said, you may wonder how this Design Thinking process actually works, and how it is put in practice to solve user issues. And so am I!
In this article, I will apply Design Thinking to a case study, and find out how it can help solving user issues to improve their Urban Mobility Experience.
To do so, we will take the example of a fictional app called UrbanGo: a public transit and mapping startup based in Silicon Valley, which goal is to solve the problems of urban mobility by offering the quickest and cheapest public and private transport routes to their users.
Context & presentation of the challenge
Our client, UrbanGo, already developed a mobile application for its users. In this mobile app, the users select a starting point and a destination, and the app provides different multimodal routes with the estimated time and the cost of them.
Although the current product of UrbanGo already solves some of the main problems of the urban mobility, there is one pain point for many users: the different amount of public transport tickets the users have to purchase.
Also, public transport tickets come in paper or plastic cards, and the process of buying these tickets can be very annoying (queues, vending machines that don’t work, etc.).
Finally, things like pricing or purchasing the correct ticket can become a real pain when you are abroad.
The challenge here is, using the Design Thinking method, to create a feature for this app that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels.
N.B: In this exercise, we let go of potential security issues and other limitations. Also, the 5th stage of the Design Process (Test) will not be realised as part of this exercise which concerns a fictional app.
Now let’s take up the challenge!
1ST STEP: EMPATHIZE
Preliminary questions
Before engaging in interview preparation and asking around, let’s start with a quick personal introspection to better define the scope of the challenge, by determining the following elements:
- The problem we are solving: improving the urban transit experience by creating a feature for UrbanGo, that solves the main pain point of having too many different public transport tickets to pay, and helps with the other above-mentioned pain points (i.e annoying purchasing processes, price, difficulty to find the right ticket when abroad).
- Our audience: people using public transport, who are regular mobile apps (including city navigation apps) users, preferably who have experienced using urban transportation abroad.
- The client’s competition: among the multiple existing transport apps, we’ll focus here on multimodal ones (covering several modes of transport). Below are a few examples classified into 3 categories:
— The “Giants”: Google Maps, CityMapper, Moovit→ Widely used, they cover a large amount of places, including smaller cities. CityMapper also offers an unlimited weekly pass in London (similar to the classic Oyster card subscription), which enables to use all types of public transport without having to pay tickets or top-up.
— Local official competitors: TFL (Transport for London), RATP → These local apps only covers one specific city, although they are more likely to give more accurate real-time indications and city updates (line under work, etc.) Also, they usually enable to connect your city transport card to your phone and manage your subscriptions and/or payments.
— Local alternative competitors (ex. for London): London Transport Planner, London Transport Live Times → Quite similar to the latter, they often offer additional services, such as suggestions of personalised touristic routes including the local must-sees.
- What’s the tone/feeling? The text and app instructions must really easy and quick to understand, since people using transport apps to find their way through the city may often be in a hurry or busy — as well as tourists or potentially lost newcomers need very clear information.
Our goal being now better defined, it’s now time to hear from the most important people: our fellow users!
User interviews
I have interviewed 5 people, males and females, aged 18–60, from different nationalities, who all use public transport and have experienced it at least once in a foreign city.
Here are some of the questions I asked:
“How often do you use public transport? Which one do you prefer and why?”
“What do you think of the process of buying tickets? (time, price…) Do you find it easy?”
“Do you use any city transport app? (If yes: which one is your favourite and why?)”
“Do you mind having to use different modes of transports (ex: bus+metro) to go to your destination?”
“What is the most important for you when choosing a suggested journey (time, price, changes, no walking etc.)?”
“Have you experienced any type of frustration using transport apps? Is there a new feature you would like to see in these apps?”
“What did you find the most difficult when using city public transport abroad?”
“Tell me one story or anecdote that happened to you while using city public transport (could be anything, positive or negative, funny, interaction with another user, emergency, something personal…whatever comes to your mind!)”
2ND STEP: DEFINE
The purpose of these interviews were to find out what the main pain-points are (what are users having the most trouble with). I had to remember that the key to successful interviews is empathy — which happened to be easier when my audience was the most different to me, since my own experience was less likely to influence the way I perceived their answers.
The findings:
From these interviews, I noted that the most frequently mentioned pain points were:
- There are too many choices, too much information at the same time when it comes to choose among the preselected journeys on a travel app. When visiting an unknown city, it’s even harder to pick the best option.
- Most of the time, the price of the journey isn’t mentioned on the app.
- There are often different types of tickets within the same city (ex: Metro + bus tickets / commuting trains tickets in Paris), which is a real pain especially abroad.
- Tickets machines sometimes only accept one type of payment or have a hard-to-use user interface.
- Paper tickets are small and it’s really easy to lose them.
- The issue of harassment in public transport, especially among female interviewees, has also come up often. It was either in response to the last “open” question — telling me about a random personal thing that happened to them while using public transport — , or related to the issue of switching between 2 modes of transport and having to wait at a dodgy place.
Although finding solutions to improve the last point is something I’d be personally interested to work on — but I think the way to address that problem would go way beyond a fictional transit app’s features — , I chose for this exercise to solve the problem faced by travellers when they have to find their way to a destination in an unknown city.
3RD STEP: IDEATE
In this step, I used the brainstorming technique of mind-mapping to generate ideas. The goal here is to come up with as many as possible but pick only 2 or 3 different solutions to develop.
The result: ⬇️
After reviewing all the different ideas, I tried to think of how to make the most out of them in order to define a solution to develop for our initial problem. Here is what I came up with:
==> I will add a new feature to the app, which will be specifically adapted to travellers who arrive for the first time in the city and need to reach a chosen destination. The new mode, which can be directly selected on the main page, aims at reducing the stress of having to choose among too many options and be overwhelmed by new information, by providing the user with an A to Z personalised solution to reach their destination. It would work as follows:
➡️ Ask the user to fill in a quick questionnaire, that not only asks about starting point and destination, but also their preferred options regarding transport mode, price, or accessibility…Inspired by the train/flight booking process, the principle here is one question = one screen. In this way, it is easier for the user to be clear about their own expectations and worry about one at a time — especially since it’s hard to focus when you’re tired after a long trip.
➡️ Using AI, the app then finds the most appropriate way & the related tickets, which can be directly purchased as an all-in-one ticket on the app.
➡️ Once the ticket purchased, the user simply follows the instructions to go to their destination (and doesn’t need to buy physical tickets!)
4TH STEP: PROTOTYPE
Now let’s put it — literally — on paper! I created hand-sketched wireframes to have an idea of what all of this could look like:
(The main part of the first screen is occupied by a map — sorry it’s a bit blurry!)
Conclusion
Even though it wasn’t easy, I really enjoyed doing this exercise. I had already heard of the Design Thinking method, but never tried to apply it to a concrete case study. I hope this first attempt was ok, I know there is still large room for improvement!
I’m eager to discover further applications of the Design Thinking process, as it definitely is a different and very interesting approach to solve complex problems.
Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed this challenge as much as I did! 😊
