Ironhack’s Prework Challenge 1: Design Thinking

Citymapper is a free public transit and web mapping app that offers the faster and easier route to get to the desired destination. The routes can be covered using public transportation, like bus, sub, train… or private/shared transportation like cars, motorcycles, bikes or even walking.

Although the product they have created already solves some of the main problems of the urban mobility, there is one pain point for many users: the different amount of public transport tickets the users have to purchase.

Public transport tickets come in paper or plastic cards. Very often different public transport tickets are necessary to go from point A to B. And the process of buying these tickets can be very annoying (queues, vending machines that don’t work, etc.).

Finally, things like pricing or purchasing the correct ticket can become a real pain when you are abroad.

Following the Thinking Design methodology I talked to a group of people that use public transportation, not only in their daily life but also when travelling, so I can understand who our users are, what are their experiences and what is important to them. By asking them several questions, I was able to obtain this kind of information.

Some of the questions I formulated are the followings:

• When moving around the city, which kind of transportation do you use most? Public, private, bicycle…
• How is your experience moving around the city using public transportation? Is the information in the stations and/or the offices clear enough?
• When you have to go to an unknown destination, do you use any application that helps you determine the best option of routes, transportations and estimated times?
• When using public transportation, do you use more than 1?
• How is your experience using public transportation, specially when using more than one to go from point A to B?
• How and where do you usually buy the tickets?
• Please, tell me a bit about the experience of purchasing the tickets. Is there any aspect you would like to change?

All the users are regular users of public transportation and they believe that it is the best way to move around a city, especially if it is a big one. Most of the interviewees use Google Maps to get information on mobility, since the information provided is very reliable and no other application offers the complete service (mobility information + the ticket purchase). In addition, all agree that when travelling it is very useful since sometimes it is hard to find information about public transportation.

All of them use smartphones in their daily life and, when possible, they prefer to buy tickets through the apps, avoiding encountering problems such as the machines not working, long queues (depending on the city and the station they can be very long) or the “waste” of time that the process implies. Nevertheless, this option is very limited and the option for using virtual tickets is only available for bus transportation (in Barcelona city).

Related to this, physical tickets can be only purchased inside sub stations or in some certain stores (in Barcelona city) and this is very annoying when the user needs to take a bus and does not have the ticket already purchased.

In addition, some of the interviewees work outside the city and say that in order to get to the office they have to use several public transportations from different companies. This makes them spend time not only moving from station to station but buying tickets in each of the stations.

Finally, they have experienced frustrating moments, especially abroad, not understanding the ticketing system since there are too many options based on city areas, travelling groups, time for using the ticket … and they have decided to take another transportation even if it was not the most suitable.

So, based on this information, it is clear that there is a need to improve the process of purchasing different public transport tickets by different channels.

But HOW can this be improved?

• Adding a feature in the application that allows users buying the tickets in there. The user enters the information needed to purchase the tickets: from/to, date and the number of travellers; a QR code is generated. There are two options: the tickets can be printed or the codes can be downloaded in the phones and scanned in the used transportations.
• Adding a feature in the application that generates a personal and non-transferable code that the user scans when getting into the first transport and then when leaving it. When the journey is finished, the application detects that there are no more scans and therefore calculates the price and the user pays via the phone.

I decided to choose the second idea, since I think it is easier to use for the user: once the code is created, the only requirement to travel is to have the app opened and they forget about the tickets!

I have never worked through the design thinking process before and this first time has been really interesting. It seems easy to apply but when putting the theory in practice I realized how important it is to focus on each of the steps.

I have also understood the importance of interviewing users. Putting on their shoes is the way for deeply understanding their pain points and in that way be able to design an improvement useful for them. In that sense, brainstorming has been very challenging, trying to think innovative solutions could lead on getting stuck for a while. Once you overcome this moment, it is really fun!!

Thank you for reading!