A Diverge-Converge Technique to Solve a Problem
Using Design Thinking to make Urban Mobility more User-friendly
If you ever used the public transportation of a new city you might have spent some time trying to figure out where to buy the tickets and which ones are suitable for your journey. At that point, you either searched for directions in your favourite map service application or ended up queuing at the info point to ask for advice. Other times you had to install several apps to be able to use different modes of transportation. Through an interactive cycle based on Human-Centered Design, I came up with a solution to simplify this whole process.
The Challenge
Citymapper is a public transit app and mapping service which aims to solve the problems of urban mobility by displaying options of public and private transportation routes. It is currently operating in most of the major cities worldwide.
The platform solves many of the issues that people face when trying to get from point A to B in a large number of cities. As the platform keeps growing they have been trying to come up with a new feature that would potentially help significantly the experience of its users: the integration of ticket and payment methods. This would mostly save time from queueing up to a vending machine, print paper or plastic tickets, and take care to not lose them.
The Method: Design Thinking
Empathize
Design Thinking is a methodology based on the human-centred approach. Therefore it is important to start by understanding who the users are and which problems they encounter. It is crucial during this phase to observe the users and how they interact with their environment.
To solve the problem of the ticket system I started by defining my target group to be all adults who use public transportation, some more familiar with technologies than others. Afterwards, I conducted interviews with potential users from different countries, preparing open questions beforehand:
Describe how you usually try to get to your desired destination.
Are there any apps you are using to guide you and what could be improved?
What frustrates you when you are using public transportation?
How do you purchase tickets in your city? And when you are abroad?
The interviews quickly turned into a conversation where I was listening to the people telling me about their encounters when moving around the city. At this phase it is important to understand the problems that they face in their cities and when they travel abroad.
I have looked at some of the competitors in the city where I am living, Berlin, and also abroad. This includes GoogleMaps, BVG, Fairtiq, Freenow, Deutsch Bahn, Wanderu, and Moovit. Some of them redirect the users to different ticket companies while others try to provide combined tickets within a limited number of cities.
Define
While speaking with the users I’ve noticed that very often they don’t realize many pain points with their local public transport ticketing system. People get used to interacting with a product in a certain way over and over again that their behaviour becomes intuitive towards it. While travelling abroad they have to put their reflective system into practice, which requires effort to understand the local ticket system implemented. Therefore most of the encounters that I noted from the conversations came up when listening to the behaviour when they moving around in a new city:
“I have to ask someone for help on buying the tickets.”
“When I have big luggage with me it takes some time to figure out where I put my ticket. One time I even lost it!”
“In some countries, I have to exchange money to the local currency and beware of the rates of conversion. Sometimes I have difficulties to understand the language displayed on the ticket machines.”
“In my city, I usually have to install two apps. One to search how to get to my desired destination and another one to buy the tickets.”
“Very often there are queues to buy tickets at the metro station and they don’t have the cashless payment option. Especially now with the pandemic situation, I don’t feel confortable with this.”
The main problem I found was the effort it takes for the users to understand and interact with a new ticket system outside of the city they live in.
Ideate
During the ideation phase, it was time to diverge and come up with many potential solutions to solve the problem.
Some of the selected ones:
💡 The user will be able to create an account and choose the desired language and currency to be used everywhere. When travelling abroad the app will convert the price fairly following the official daily conversion rates.
💡 QR codes on the phone to validate the tickets.
💡 In the future, the means of transport should be equipped with sensors or GPS, so that it detects when the user gets in and out, without the need to show the ticket.
💡 As the platform continues to grow it is essential to target as many areas as possible, even outside the main cities. Therefore, if the local system still requires printed tickets the app should include a feature to easily send the ticket per email to be printed in the nearest kiosk or print shop.
💡 A user-friendly sound design is essential as an additional way to notify users about their actions while interacting with public transportation.
💡 When the user arrives at the destination he can swipe a button on the app to end the trip.
💡 The app will always charge the lowest price for the route travelled.
Prototype
In the Prototype phase, I turned the ideas into low-resolution prototypes. In other words, converging into a possible solution to solve the problem.
The next phase would be to test the prototypes with the potential users and obtain feedback. It is also an occasion to develop empathy with the people I am designing for.
After this process, it is essential to iterate, by going back to other phases of the process several times until reaching the final product.
It is a continuous process of interaction with the user.
As the first challenge of the UX/UI Bootcamp from Ironhack, I didn’t have specific expectations about the outcome of the whole method of Design Thinking. As I was stepping through the several phases, I encountered similarities of this process with my background in architecture, in the approach to develop a project.
The assumptions of what are the pain points that the users face are not necessarily the biggest problems they encounter. This conclusion came up as I created empathy with them and understood their behaviour in the context of the challenge.
