INTRO
As I put my first step in UX/UI Design career with Ironhack, I was given a first mission to realize ‘Design thinking Process’ focused on a famous transportation application ‘Citymapper’.
Citymapper
Citymapper is one of the most famous transit applications and mapping services, competing with several other transportation apps like GoogleMap, Moovit or local transport applications. It has established its position, while using data pulled from a variety of sources. That includes open resources such as user-generated data or collected data by local employed and it makes its information more practical and precise.
In 2020, it added its own way of payement ‘Citymapper Pass’ for using public transportation without buying several tickets. However, its utilisation is still limited in London and users should buy the Pass in advance.
Scope of project
In this mobile app, it provides different multimodal routes with the estimated time and the cost of them. However, users still have difficulties to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels and especially it becomes really tricky when we are in abroad. Assuming that users already registered their paying information and there are no security issues, I started to find out solutions according to ‘Design Thinking process’
Design Thinking process
1.Empathize
- What problem are you solving? The difficulties that users face when they have to purchase public transport tickets, after they find their routes on the application
- Who is your audience? People who use transit applications to find routes, also especially for the people who are in a foreign country where they are not familiar with buying transportation tickets in the place
- Who is your client’s competition? Google Map, Waze, Transit, Moovit and Local transportation applications
- What’s the tone/feeling? The application provides highly practical transit routes with various channels and has easy-to-use interface that we can clearly and easily employ
Based on these critical points, I carried out interviews with 5 people who frequently use public transport applications to find out the main problems that users can encounter.
2. Define
After interviewing with several people, I realized that there are some common pain points when they have to purchase tickets after using the application
Problems
- Inconvenience they go through, when they have to buy tickets for several times to use various means of transportation
- Inconvenience of waiting in line
- Difficulty of finding a place or a machine to buy tickets, especially when they are in an unfamiliar place
- Difficulty in purchasing public transport tickets overseas, especially when they have a problem to communicate
- ‘Citymapper Pass’ exists already, however it can be used only in London and users must pay at least four weeks in advance.. Thus it is not very useful for short-term travelers
3. Ideate
In consideration of these problems, I’ve come up with some solutions
- Charging user’s desired amount of money via the application or the site. Once users decide their route on the app, they can use this money for purchasing several tickets altogether at once
- Buying transport tickets directly on Citymapper, users can purchase them using PayPal or credit cards that they registered in the app
- Redirecting users to a local application where they can purchase their tickets
The second thought can cause inconvenience that users have to buy a ticket each time so that they should access to payment window several times. The disadvantage of the third idea is that users should download a local application and if the local application doesn’t provide the appropriate language that user can understand, that can be a problem.
For these reasons, I decided to choose the first idea and shaped it up. Although I recognized that in first idea, we have to think about technical problem. For example, how we connect between CityMapper payment system and local transportation services. However, assuming that we have a partnership with local transport companies, I decided to proceed with this idea.
4. Prototype
In making of prototypes, I shaped up two parts. When we have to add money for the first time and how we buy tickets after that
5. Conclusion
After this project, I noticed that it is really important how we apply correctly Design Thinking process for making a product. Especially, what was really remarkable, it was Empathize part. As a former designer in another field, the process of brainstorming, ideate and prototyping was kinda already familiar. However, looking for problems actively through empathizing with real users, it was the experience that I haven’t had before. With this project, I could learn how we connect with users and why we have to co develope with people.
