Let’s practice the Design Thinking Process!

Ironhack’s Prework: Julie Drouillard_Challenge1: How to optimize the app Citymapper?

Here we are! It’s time to realize my first Design Thinking challenge which is part of my journey to become a future Ironhacker! My first mission is to create a new feature for the app Citymapper, which one will it be? You will just need a few minutes to discover it ;)

THE CLIENT: CITYMAPPER

Citymapper is a public transit app and mapping service which instantly compares your travel options between 2 locations, in supported cities. It integrates data for all urban modes of transport (car, bike, scooter and walk), in addition to public transport, and it displays for each mode the costs of your trip, the live departure times, the trip’s duration, and the calories you will burn! Pretty cool right? Maybe that’s why Citymapper claim is ‘The Ultimate Transport App’… Well, almost! Indeed, while the app is super helpful and easy to use, there is one pain point users tend to run into: they still have to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels because there is no way to do it in the current app.

So this is where my Design Thinking challenge starts, keeping in mind that:

• Users already have all their information on the app, they will neither need to login nor enter any data when paying/checking-out.
• There are no security issues and other limitations. The focus is on finding a quick and user-friendly solution for the users.

THE METHODOLOGY: DESIGN THINKING

The Design Thinking (DT) process is a protocol for solving complex problems and discovering new opportunities, by devising desirable solutions for clients / users. It’s a 5 steps method: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.

Before going through the 5 steps of the DT process, it’s important to answer the following questions to have a better point-of-view to find the most appropriate solution:

• What problem are you solving? This one has already been explained previously: add a feature to Citymapper in order to avoid public transport users to buy their tickets by different channels.
• Who is your audience? It targets anyone with a smartphone who uses an urban transport mode or a public one to get around a city.
• Who is your client’s competition? Citymapper’s competitors are Google Maps, Transit, Moovit and the local transport apps.
• What’s the tone/feeling ? The app is easy to understand and convenient to use, the navigation is playful, and the information seems relevant for each option displayed.

Keeping this in mind, I conducted interviews to get a better understanding of the users’ pain points and needs while using Citymapper. And this is where I entered the 1st step of the DT process…

1. EMPATHIZE

I’ve interviewed 5 persons with different profiles and ages, users of public transport and travelers. In order to come up with something usable, I mainly used open-ended questions and I tried to listen with empathy in order to collect as much valuable feedbacks as possible.

The most frequently reported problems are reviewed in the 2nd step of the DT Process…

2. DEFINE

You will find below some quotes from my interviews. My point is to highlight the users’ pain points coming from their personal experiences and then define an actionable problem statement:

- I always lose my ticket, if you give me a piece of paper you can be sure that I will lose it 5 minutes after my purchase…

- You can’t find vending office everywhere, for example at the bus station…

- One day I’ve waited more than 15 minutes to access a vending machine and the system broke right before me, so I had to queue again 15 minutes at another one… never again…

- I was abroad, in front of a vending machine and I was so lost because there were so many choices, options, zones, I was unable to understand so I cancelled and finally decided to go to a counter… Such a waste of time.

- It’s always crowded to access a vending machine or a counter, and I’m always in a hurry, so I have no time to lose queuing here… Time flies, I don’t want to miss my connection.

- We can’t always pay with our credit card but sorry… Who has change nowadays to pay a ticket in the bus? I don’t!

After hearing from the users and compiling my notes, I easily came to this conclusion: most of their problems could be solved if they could buy their tickets, for each transport mode covered by Citymapper, directly in the app. And this is what I previously named as my problem statement!

3. IDEATE

Just as a quick reminder and because I can already see your eyes rolling like ‘it’s impossible, there is no way to do this as is’… And I know it! But Ironhack asked me to be creative, with no barriers and limitations in this specific case, so let’s assume that Citymapper is a universal transit app able to generate digital tickets valid for all the transport modes collated in the app.

The ideation phase’s goal is to come up with as many ideas as possible to encourage innovation and generate solutions. Here is what came out of my brainstorming :

• Buy all the tickets needed for the overall trip directly in the app
• Filter between the fastest, the most economical or the most chosen trip (useful if you’re a tourist for example and you don’t know which way to choose, take the one which is most chosen in average) before payment
• Select the quantity of tickets to buy
• Choose between several in-app payments
• Generate a QR Code as a valid transport ticket (and save it your wallet for offline use)
• Send an email to collect your QR Code (you can print it if you want) and your receipt
• And more generally but less relevant in this specific case: create a universal Citymapper pass for all transport modes covered in the app (Citymapper card?), you charge money on it and you can use it everywhere Citymapper is available!

4. PROTOTYPE

5. CONCLUSION

I really enjoyed working on this Design Thinking challenge, because it was a playful way to realize a first concrete case about something which was still very theorical and unknown for me (I’m discovering UX/UI Design)!

First, I was a bit panicked to go in every direction, but this methodology is a super tool to structure your mind and devise concrete solutions for clients or users. In a nutshell, just go through each step of the process and everything will be super fluid!

Also, don’t botch the ‘Empathize phase’ which is key in this process! A lot of great ideas come from the users and it helps a lot complete the personal thoughts you have at the beginning of the process.

And I had a lot of fun on the ‘Prototype phase’ because this is where the magic happens, and your ideas come to life! I’m really looking forward for the next challenge!

Thanks a lot for reading me until here and feel free to share your comments and thoughts!