Ironhack Challenge #1: Design Thinking

Pre-work exercise for UX/UI Bootcamp

Welcome to my first ever article!

On my first challenge proposed by Ironhack, I was asked to use Design Thinking Technics to solve a problem.

The Company

Citymapper is a public transport and mapping service which looks for the best options available for your journey, usually with live timing, between any two locations. It contains data from all urban modes of transport, including walking, cycling and driving, in addition to public transport. It is free of charge to users, and is supported by a mobile app on devices such as mobile phones, and by an Internet website

The app provide different routes, with different transport options, the estimated time and the cost, after you select a starting point and a destination.

The Problem:

Although this app does help, specially tourists, moving around a city easier, the main Problem point for users is having to buy several public transport tickets for the different modes of transportation, what means dealing with inevitably queues, vending machines, purchasing the correct ticket and language barriers.

The Challenge:

Create a feature for this app that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets avoiding all the problematics we discuss before.

So let’s explore de Design Thinking technics to develop the solution.

Empathize

In this stage, for a better understanding of my Problem and eventually arrive to a better solution, I need to have some things in mind, like who is the user, the challenges they face, what are their expectations about the app and what problem I’m solving. I should also consider what are my clients competition.

With this in mind I prepare five questions to later analyze:

1. What kind of transportation do you utilize on your daily journeys?
2. How did you plan your journey before it starts?
3. How you describe your last experience using public transit?
4. Did you face any challenges? Describe them?

5. Did you ever use public transport in another country or city that you not familiarized? Describe that experience?

Define

Here are the main findings focused on my user’s viewpoint.

• Try to buy tickets prior to the journey, but still facing the “printing” problem.
• Waste of paper tickets and confusion on “what to show”.
• Get lost and loose the specific transport they have chosen.
• Box offices closed, full of people, not accepting cash, language barrier or bad customer service at the stations.
• Every city/county have their transportations system, confusion information.
• Level of difficulty elevates when involves more than one connection/transport.
• Extra charges on cards.
• Google Maps is the chosen app to find directions quickly.

This are my most common pain points, moment to start looking for solution

Ideate

In this stage we should come up with as many ideas and solutions as possible, in a wide range and start to narrow them down so you can choose the one that fits your user’s and your clients needs better. No idea is too crazy but it my not be just the right one.

I have narrow my ideas to the three I thought would be the best for this situation.

1. QR Code. The user select journey, the cost and the type of transport, purchase the ticket online. one QR code will be generated and stored in a virtual wallet the user will then scan this digital pass in the stations throughout their journey. (need QR Code readers everywhere)
2. Pay as you Go. The user would create a virtual pass that would be accepted in all sort of transports and would be charged monthly according with your journeys. (need overseas bank connections due to tourists)
3. NFC Technology The user select the starting point and the destination, the time to initiate the journey, then will have the option to purchase the virtual ticket that would be stored under virtual temp NFC card. (NFC is present almost in all transports)

With one of this solutions we can “fix” the problem of wasting time, confusing machines, or wrong tickets. I decide to choose de option 3.

Prototype

The user will select the starting point, the destination and the starting time.

After the user select the most convenient transport, we will then pay using is card details. The app will automatically generate one virtual NFC card for that specific journey.

Advantages? The user will avoid long lines to purchase the ticket, any type of payment card will be accepted, national or foreigners, and NFC technology is present almost in all mobile phones and transports.

Key Insights:

I start this process with many questions and with a considerable amount of uncertainty, but the process of design thinking really helps to understand the importance of knowing the What, the Why and the How.

To find the pain points, the interview is very important and will help you to concentrate in what is exactly important, find the better idea without losing or main focus.

I really enjoyed all the learning and Thinking process behind this challenge.

Thank you for reading!