Design Thinking for UrbanGo

Ironhack’s Prework: Challenge 1

Getting to a new place is always exciting! Except when you have to figure out how to get there. We now have many options to travel in a city: train, bus, tram, taxi, ferry… we can even share bikes, scooters and cars. So many options that it is actually hard to choose quickly the fastest route…

UrbanGo has been created to help us make that choice. UrbanGo is a public transit and mapping startup based in Silicon Valley. Their goal is to solve the problems of urban mobility by offering the quickest and cheapest public and private transport routes to their users.

Empathize

Before starting to work on a solution, it is crucial to identify clearly the problem UrbanGo is facing. The startup’s purpose is to simplify their users’ travels as much as possible. They are already doing a lot by suggesting the fastest routes to go from a point A to a point B. Users are often invited to take several types of public transport, strategically selected to help them save time.

However, it also means that they have to buy several tickets, which can actually be time-consuming and can alter the travelers’ overall experience. And it is even more difficult for a tourist visiting the city, considering the lack of bearings and the language barrier. The residents who use the public transports probably already have a long-term pass and won’t face the same issues. The tourists on the other hand need to be guided: a simple connection between two types of public transports can be a challenge for them, and even a very stressful situation.

Of course, UrbanGo isn’t the only solution they can use to find this kind of information. Cities have now an ecosystem of websites and applications that can be a competition for UrbanGo, but also an interesting network to gather data, especially real-time information. They can be divided in two types, depending on the time of use:

• Before the trip: researches on web mapping sites (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Mappy etc) and all the city guides (Michelin, Lonely Planet, etc.) that will provide information on the passes and tickets available. We can even add to the list local tourism agencies.
• On the go: geolocated apps that follow you along the way and that you can check in real time. The strongest competitor here is Citymapper, as it crosses data from all urban modes of transport and calculates in real time the fastest route. A lot of cities also have applications to provide information about their local network in real-time.

After identifying these aspects of the problem, I interviewed a group of 5 people between the age of 25 to 55, that travel a lot, use public transports regularly, as well as mapping applications. I wanted to keep my questions very open-ended to see if they would naturally talk about the ticket prices and buying conditions as a pain point. It actually came up quite quickly in all my interviews and allowed me to follow up on that specific point to dig for stories and areas of improvement.

Questions :

1. When you are in a new city, do you like using public transports?
2. How do you prepare your trips through a city that you don’t know?
3. When choosing a route, what is the most important criteria for you? Time, cost, traveling conditions, etc
4. Do you mind taking different modes of transport in a same route?
5. Overall, do you find it difficult to use public transports abroad? If yes, why and what would you change?
6. Have you had a bad experience using public transports abroad?

DEFINE

The first thing that came up during the interviews was the difficulty to prepare and anticipate these travels in a new city. Most interviewees explained that it can only be managed when you are already in town, not only to buy the tickets but mostly to really comprehend the local transit network and all the ticket and pass options. When you visit a city, this is an unavoidable step, but it is by far one of the least enjoyable of your stay. It can even be stressful: you don’t want to buy the wrong pass, but you don’t want to spend too much time choosing either. And you often need cash to be able to buy your tickets.

When they were asked about the routes with several modes of transports, they all told me that they would prefer to avoid them as much as possible. The more you multiply the connections, the more you risk losing your way, going the wrong direction, missing a connection, etc.

The information provided along the way is clearly a point of frustration as well. For instance, one of the interviewees told me about the time they were completely lost in Tokyo because they could not find a map in their language (there were maps in English, they just could not find them in the first place). Another one explained me how frustrated they were when, on holiday in Stockholm with their family, they could not take their connection by bus because they needed to buy their bus ticket at the train station, and only there…

Even the validation conditions are not always clear. In Vienna, a person that I interviewed had to beg a traffic controller not to give them a fine: the validation is mandatory, but all the stations have an open entrance, with no security gate, so they didn’t know where or when they had to validate.

To sum it up, here are the pain points identified when buying public transit tickets abroad:

• It is time consuming
• It is difficult to choose the right ticket or pass
• It is not always practical, especially when you have to pay cash
• It can be stressful
• It can be difficult to find the right selling point for a specific mode of transport
• The validation conditions are not always clear and are different from a city/country to another

IDEATE

These 6 issues were the starting point for me to imagine solutions. Here is a mind mapping of the ideas I came up with: I linked them to the pain points they could provide an answer to. The one that ticked the most boxes was to allow users to buy directly their ticket or pass in the applications. It actually is a solution that was identified and expressed by my 5 interviewees.

Mind mapping: solutions for UrbanGo

I decided to focus my prototype on that idea, but I kept in mind two additional features that could complete the solution and make it check all the boxes:

• The personalized pass calculator to choose the most adapted one for a user
• The validation alert along the way

That last one echoes the Stockholm story and reminds us that a simple feature like that can actually change everything. For instance, in Paris, Citymapper tells you where to sit in the metro. That piece of information doesn’t seem much but it actually makes you save time in your transit.

PROTOTYPE

Prototype: buy a ticket or a pass in the UrbanGo app

I wanted to make sure these paying options were accessible from the home page to the choice of a route. Also, when someone launches an itinerary for the first time in a city, the pop-up to buy a ticket or a pass shows up to present these options (only once to avoid spamming users).

Options

• Buy a one-way ticket: the quickest solution, valid for all the modes of transit of the route, activated for an hour after its first use.
• Buy a pass: this option opens the pass calculator. The user answers a few questions and the app suggests the most appropriate ticket options, just like it would do for the routes to go to a specific point.

When the user has selected the desired pass or ticket, the check-out is done with the payment information registered in the app and a QR code is generated. We can also imagine a payment through the NFC technology.

Validation: reminders on the way

I also added a screen for the message along the way to inform the user when they need to validate the pass. With a new type of ticket (QR code or NFC) can come more questions about its validation, so it is important to be very clear as of when and how it should be flashed.

The Design Thinking process

The interviews have been particularly enlightening for me. First, they showed me the power of a story and how it can highlight and illustrate a pain point. This kind of testimony, the context around it and the way the person felt at that moment give precious insights on what needs to be changed and how.

Having to prepare interviews also prevented me from jumping to a solution too quickly. As I read the assignment, I already imagined a solution that seemed simple to me but let aside many crucial aspects of the problem. By doing these interviews, I had to concentrate on the problem and identify clearly the pain points. Once they were laid down on paper, it was the actual starting point to come up with ideas and solutions for UrbanGo.