Ironhack’s Prework: Design Thinking — Challenge 1
Cities are complicated — we make them usable. The ultimate transport app and technology for mobility in cities.
Citymapper is a mobile app aimed at solving the seemingly simple but increasingly complex problem of getting from point A to B in urban environments. It provides its users with a range of routing options via multiple transport methods in large cities around the world. As a company they hope to solve key issues in navigating public transit, congestion, transport cost, and climate change.
Cities are still complicated
For Ironhack’s prework challenge, I was tasked with finding a way to improve the app experience—specifically the process of ticket buying. While interviewing public transit users, I identified two main problems and used this to create two personas to design for.
The Tourist
For the infrequent traveler, and especially travelers visiting an unfamiliar city, the biggest barrier to entry for public transit is simply figuring out which tickets or passes to purchase, and where to purchase them. With so many different transit options, and different companies and lines and available passes, it could be tempting to simply give up and pay more for a taxi or Lyft. How can we streamline and simplify the ticket-buying process?
But for more experienced travelers, I found a different problem.
The Frequent Traveler
For those familiar with their city and the numerous routes and options available to them, knowing what to buy isn’t the issue. In fact, many travelers I spoke to already had monthly or yearly subscription passes which served their needs wonderfully. However, many of them had multiple passes; or one pass they use daily, and other supplementary tickets they need to buy from time to time.
This struck me as a similar but related issue to the problem of the tourist—how to manage all of these different passes? Was it possible to design a solution that catered to both new and frequent travelers, and help them both pay for and manage the multitude of tickets they need to navigate the city?
Solving the problem
To start, I looked at the existing Citymapper experience, which works pretty well. You can enter your starting point and destination, and the app will surface the different options and modes of transit available to you. It gives you estimated travel time, number of transfers, and even expected cost. Here, I found the first hiccup—the cost is always displayed in the country’s own currency. But for travelers who are used to thinking in terms of another currency, this could be confusing. So I decided to add an option to display cost in a currency of the user’s choice, doing the conversion for them and removing a mental hurdle.
Once a user has selected their preferred route, we come to the next solution — allowing them to pay for their ticket (or tickets) in-app, removing the problem of figuring out where to buy the needed ticket at the station. We present a familiar payment screen, with options for credit card, Apple or Google Pay, and PayPal. (Citymapper can even charge a small convenience fee here, à la Fandango, to add a bit of monetization!)
Once the user has completed the transaction, the ticket is added to their mobile wallet and can be intelligently surfaced as they arrive at their station with geofencing, where they can tap to pay at the terminal.
These purchased tickets can also be accessed with a brand new section of the app, which I’ve envisioned as a new navigation tab at the bottom, called “Passes.” This new section will allow users to find their purchased tickets, as well as solve the problem of the frequent traveller — here, they can manage all of their different tickets and passes.
A default pass can be selected for quick access to a user’s most frequently used, with the rest of their passes stacked below. Subscription passes show renewal dates with an option to cancel at any time; pay-as-you-go passes and cahiers display remaining rides with an option to refill; and one-time tickets will display here until they are used, after which they auto-delete. If a user uses their plastic pass, the app will still stay up-to-date, giving them the freedom to keep their phone in their pocket at the station if they choose, while still able to monitor and manage their rides.
Wrap up
This project served as a great introduction to user research and ideation. Everyone I interviewed had a unique point-of-view with their own specific issues and pain-points. It was challenging to sift through the multitude of responses and distill everything down into a few issues that I could solve. I was flooded with so many ideas for so many different problems, it was hard to let them go! I was left with a new appreciation for the mountain of tiny decisions that go into shaping every step of a product experience.
And now… on to the next! C’est parti !
