Design Thinking Exercise: Citymapper
Hi everyone! It’s time to start communicating here. And I’d like to start my communication with my first Challenge at Ironhack which is about Design thinking. I couldn’t download UrbanGo App but as recommended, I used Citymapper App which is pretty similar.
The Client
Citymapper is a public transit app and mapping service that displays transport options, usually with live timing, between two locations in a supported city.
The problem
The Citymapper product already solves pretty well some of the main problems of urban mobility. But there is one tricky point for many users: the number of public transport tickets the users have to purchase every day. Also, aside from the main issue, Citymapper users suffer from communication problems in case we are speaking about travelers, the need to line up, not working vending machines, and prices for tickets.
But, what do we try to change here? Of course - the user experience. Especially, those who need to buy several tickets, or do not speak the language for being able to go to the ticket office, or waste their time at vendor machines.
First of all, I need to think about the Audience, who in my case will be travellers or people who do not use public transport so often like to have a public transport travel card. Usually, these people have some issues buying tickets.
Other point to think about is the Competitors. Here I can mention Google Maps, of course, Moovit, Uber and Cabify.
So, considering this information I can define that the Tone of the App should be quick and the design should be really intuitive.
To solve this problem I decided to follow the Design Thinking Scheme
As the first point of my task is about Empathizing, I had to interview some people who used to travelling and take public transport. And these were the questions I asked them:
- How often do you travel?
- When travelling, do you use any app to guide you?
- What payment methods do you use?
- How do you usually buy tickets?
- What issues do you have when travelling?
- What would you improve or change in guiding apps?
After interviewing people I got the Major Pain Points:
- purchasing or recharging travel tickets
- the price
- communication issues because of the language
- how to find the ticket office
- environmentally unfriendly because of the paper we use for paper tickets
Ideate
Having in mind all the pros and cons and the buyer persona, I could offer many things, like Virtual Card, Multi-Card for daily use, or Pay as you go. But focusing on the type of traveller I would offer a single — ticket at the moment. And then, if it works great, I would add other options.
Prototyping
Ok, great, I’m no so good at drawing, but I tried..
Learnings
Oh, my God!!! It is really challenging and I love it! My piece of advice for other people: take time to explore the app and the competitors. And, of course, for interviewing people. You really can get some great ideas! I promise to improve my prototyping. But for sure, is a really fast way to draw schemes of any app.
