Ironhack’s prework: challenge1 — Design Thinking

The Client

Citymapper was funded in 2011 by former Google employee Azmat Yusuf (now CEO) it’s a public transit app and mapping service which displays live timing transport options in supported cities. When entering your current or other location and the location you want to get to it shows options from all modes of urban transportation, such as walking, cycling, driving, public transport and cabs/uber.

Citymapper is a free mobile app supported by Android and IOS as well as a website. Starting in London and then New York by August 2020 it’s now supported in 58 cities and metropolitan areas around the world.

Besides it’s fun and easy to use design, Citymapper also offers unique features like allowing users to choose between “fast” routes and “main roads” which avoids dimly-lit areas, “rain safe” options and calorie count for walking and cycling options. It has won many prizes for design and usability over the years.

The problem

The main problems my users experience with using public transportation abroad are being able to understand how much a trip is going to cost in the different means of transportation vs. how long the ride is and understanding how the system works in different cities (some charge per distance -like OV in The Netherlands, some per ride -like the subway in New-York and some offer a daily/ 3 day/ weekly passes -like Vienna and Helsinki).

All the users I interviewed stated that they have to ask locals or look online for how to purchase tickets when in a new foreign country, They all said they would love to use an app for purchasing and validating tickets especially if it works for a lot of different cities and also shows live timing like Google maps.

The users would prefer a pass like ticket if they’re in a city for a long time but would pay by trip if they’re there for a shorter time or know that they will walk (depending on the size of the city and where they are staying) But they have trouble figuring out if the pass ticket will be worth it. Most of them would prefer to pay per trip while 1 liked the idea of an “oyster” like ticket that you top-off.

Define & Ideate

I think the potential users for this function will be frequent travellers who want the process of buying tickets to be fast easy and most importantly clear — they want to know what’s the best and cheapest option for them and they would appreciate if the app could provide that information on the spot so they don’t have to sit down and do the math. Thats why the problem I choose to address is having the app crunch down the numbers and give you the price per trip together with the time it takes to get there but also have an easily accessible page that shows the different options if the public transportation system has different time-period “passes”.

When changing to a new city on the app there will be a button that sends the user to a page that explains about the forms of pubic transport in the city and gives the option to pay per trip but also explains when the other passes are worth it for example: if a single trip is $2 and a daily pass is $5 you’d have to travel more than twice a day for it to be worth it. A weekly ticket might be $18 which means you’d have to travel over 9 times in that week for it to be worth it.

When entering a desired location the price for a single ride will be shown next to the estimate time for easy comparison. When picking the desired trip the app will ask you if you’d like to purchase the ticket or look at passes options, once paid you will be transferred to a page with a QR code you can scan or show a conductor depending on the validating system. The ticket will be accessible from both the trip’s page and the main page. The QR code page will automatically raise screen brightness for easy reading. When the ticket is used or expired it will disappear from the main page and trip page but the information about what ticket was bought will be kept on the receipt page including past trips and expiry time and date.

When buying more than 2 single trips a day the app will advise you to get a better subscription if available via pop up.

In places like the Netherlands where you are charged per distance the explanation page will inform you that you will be charged after you finish the trip according to how far you traveled with a max amount for an in- city trip, you will get a pop up notification explaining that if you exist in a different station than what you choose in the search you might be charged more or less than the estimated fee the app calculated for you.

The Prototypes

I’ve created 3 paper prototypes for the 3 types of public transportation systems I found where most common :

Always same fare city

Pay per distance city

Different passes city

What I learned

During this process I’ve learned how important it is to interview users. While I had an idea of how I wanted to product to be, talking to different people was very helpful in finding out what’s most important to people.

I also learned that people want simplicity and a truly elegant product is one that will solve al the problems before they even appear.

I also really loved the prototyping stage. It made it very easy to explain my intentions both to users and to myself.