Ironhack’s Prework: Challenge 1 Cittymapper
My first assignment at Ironhack was to apply Design Thinking Methodologies in order to find a solution for a UX Design challenge in an existing public transit app named Citymapper.
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. It integrates data for all urban modes of transport, including walking, cycling and driving, in addition to public transport.
Although the current product of Citymapper already solves some of the main problems of the urban mobility, there is still one problem remaining that needs a solution: the different amount of public transport tickets the users have to purchase in different queues and vending machines.
My task is to create a quick and user-friendly solution for this app that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels.
Empathize
So I engaged on a journey of personal introspection by asking myself the following questions:
- What problem am I solving?
- Who is my audience?
- Who’ are my client’s competitors?
- What’s the tone/feeling?
The user has to purchase multiple tickets in different purchase points for the same trip.
My client’s audience is a diverse group of people: daily work commuters, foreign visitors, ocasional users, from different age ranges that have in common the usage of public transport.
The competition is vast: Google maps, Moovit, UrbanGo, OneBusAway, Transit, etc) and the tone/feeling frustration — but none of them offers a solution to the problem we are trying to solve.
I went on and interviewed 5 people, all based in Lisbon that use public transport daily to their home-work commute but who are also used to travel abroad.
My questions to the 5 users were:
- How often do you use public transport?
- Do you use any public transit app and/or mapping service to easy your journey?
- If answered yes, which one is your favorite and why?
- And which one is the worst you’ve used and why?
- How often do you travel abroad and do you use public transport while abroad?
- Where and when do you buy tickets?
- Do you buy a monthly pass or a weekly/daily ticket?
- What payment method is your preferred?
- How would you define the process of purchasing tickets?
- How does this process make you feel?
- In an ideal scenario, how would you like to purchase your ticket?
Define
Most users interviewed use public transport and said they use Google maps mainly to find directions and which transport to take prior to their journey. Some of them also said while travelling abroad they tend to use Uber because they don’t need to worry about trying to queue to buy tickets or understand how the vending machines work, they don’t need to worry about payment methods. All of them google where and how they can purchase tickets to understand what would be the best cost effective solution for the specific time frame needed. One mentioned that he loved to travel to London because he could use his contactless bank card in all transports and the pricing is exactly the same as buying the tickets at vending machines. All of them mentioned that trying to figure out where are the vending points, how do the vending machines work and how many different tickets you’ll need to complete a journey while abroad can be very frustrating and time consuming.
Ideate
Considering all the users feedback, an app with a feature where you can purchase directly the ticket(s) for your journey would be the ideal scenario.
Things that I’ve learned
Using a Design Thinking approach is super helpful to structure a working process. The interviewing process was challenging but very insightful because it showed me that the same problem can have different layers depending on the user needs and lifestyle.
