Challenge 1: Design thinking

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to summarize my findings for Challenge 1 of the Practice UX/UI Bootcamp.

The Customer

City Mapper is a mobility app with an integrated mapping service, which displays and compares instantly, at global level, the transport options between current or chosen location and a destination point. It integrates data for all urban options of transport, from walking and cycling to driving, with a focus on public transport.

Users are able to use the app free of charge, on Android, IOS and also Mobile Web.

The Task that needs to be solved

To create a feature for City Mapper, that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels.

The design Thinking Process

In order to perform this challenge, I have followed the 5 steps of the Design Thinking Process. This is a non-linear process, which involves the following five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

1. Empathize

Before to start working on the project, we have to find the answer for the below questions, which will help us further in the project to find more appropriate solution:

· What problem are you solving?

Help people that are using public transportation to purchase easy the right tickets, without to loose time in queues.

· Who is your audience?

Everyone that is travelling with public transportation and who is using smartphone with internet connection.

· Who is your client’s competition?

CityMapper`s competition is: Google maps, Apple maps, Mooveit, Transit, Tripgo and other local transportation apps.

· What’s the tone/feeling?

Highly functional and practical (i.e. users come to the app to get a problem quickly solved — getting from A to B)

After finding the answer of these questions, I have started to conduct 5 interviews with open-ended questions. The interviewed people have different indicators: age, sex, residence, frequency of using public transportation, length of their routes and people that use public transportation abroad.

2. Define

After the interviews, I found the main pain-points of purchasing public transportation tickets:

· Loosing time while searching for vending machines;

· Broken vending machines;

· Not knowing how to buy the right ticket on the vending machine (i.g: zones);

· Queuing at the vending machines or at the counter, in order to buy tickets;

· The complexity of buying tickets from different transportation companies;

· Issues while paying with credit card at vending machines or at the counter/ticket office;

· Fear of purchasing the wrong ticket;

· Loosing paper tickets /forgetting where they put it.

Based on these results, I have planned to create a feature, that helps the users to travel easy. without the stress of purchasing the wrong ticket.

3. Ideate

The Final Solution is to create a feature that can be easy, fast and simple for everyone to use, in order to travel everywhere:

· the user can simply activate the feature by swiping the toggle when he starts the trip;

· the app will recognize the transportation usage, automatically deduct from the credit/debit card the right and minimal fare of the user`s ride;

· deactivate the feature at the end of the journey;

· get an Summary of your trip and costs.

4. Prototype

In this prototype, I have mainly kept the current design of the App, as we have to focus only on this solution. I deliberately added the feature on the Home Screen and not on particular transportation search results, because the Feature should work independent from specific routes.

In the lower part of the main screen, I have created the new `Easy Ride´ feature. This feature is inactive by default (the toggle is red).

The moment when the user starts the trip, the feature can be activated, by swiping right the red toggle and it appears a pop-up window, which asks the user to confirm the ´Easy Ride´. The user has to confirm the ride, by pressing on the ´Start´ button.

From that moment, the ride begins and on the main screen the ´Easy Ride´ toggle is turned into green.

The user can find his QR Code Ride on the right sight of the toggle. He can click on it and a pop-up with the QR code, Username, Start Point, Start Time and his Current subscription (if he has any) appears. The QR Code will be used to show to the Conductor in the train to prove that the user has a valid ticket.

In order to see or change his Preferences, he can click on the 3 vertical dots that can be found on the left side of the name of this feature. By clicking, a pop-up with his Preferences appears. Here he can change his preference class travel, payment method or see his previous routes.

Things I have learned during this process

This challenge shows that every step of the Design Thinking Process is extremely important, in order to create the right project. I have learned how to create the right interview questions for the problem that we want to solve, emphasize, consolidate the feedback, sketch up some ideas, find the final solution and design a flow prototype.