Ironhack’s Prework. Challenge 1: Design Thinking

Citymapper is a free urban transport app, available for both Android and Apple, which has an algorithm that allows us to combine all means of transport to find the best route according to our needs: metro, trains, buses, bicycles, cabs or ubers.

Some of the strengths of this app are:

· All the information that they put at the user’s service is in real time, including schedules of when the bus or train will pass, the estimated time to reach your destination and the incidents that you will find on your way.

· It is a customizable app, which allows you to save any bus stop, subway or train station to quickly access the information related to it.

· The app can work without an internet connection thanks to the offline maps.

Empathize.

However, if it works so well, what is the problem that the Ironhack’s prework invites to solve?

Mainly, the inconveniences suffered by tourists or public transport users when they have to buy various types of tickets to be able to travel and the incidents that this causes: queues, vending machines that do not work, having to carry cash to get tickets, loss of time…

Therefore, the target audience would be regular users and tourists which use public transportation. In order to investigate the problem, five public transport users have been interviewed to understand the main issues that often arise.

The questions that have been asked are the following:

· Do you usually travel by public transportation?

· When you visit a foreign country, do you prefer to use public transportation to move around or a private one like Uber?

· What is the best app you use when you travel to an unknown place?

· What are your biggest fears related to transportation when you are out of your city or country?

· Are you usually informed in advance of the fares for buying tickets for public transportation or is it something that does not concern you?

· What problems or inconveniences have you encountered when buying tickets for public transport?

· Would you use an app that would solve problems or save time when buying tickets for the metro, train, etc.?

· Would you like that from the app you could buy with a single click the different types of tickets you need for your route or trip?

· Would you like this app to have access to your personal data?

· What inconveniences would you see in using this app?

Define.

Once the interviews have been conducted, we are able to highlight the main problems that people encounter when travelling on public transport and especially when getting tickets.

“Once, the machine would not accept change and it hadn’t more money on it at late hours of the night so we had to find a store that would give us change. We almost were left in the middle of the city.”

“Abroad, depending on the country, is usually more complicated because the ticket machines do not have clear information and it’s a hassle to find the station you want to go to, if there are transfers… Many times you find that they don’t accept credit cards and if you haven’t changed to the country’s currency you can’t take out the bills. Also, for example, in Hungary, the only bus going to the airport required taking out the tickets in a special machine that was not in the subway, but in a specific point of its bus route, and it was a hassle to be locating it and going there to get the tickets and then return to your area of the city.”

“The biggest problems are when the vending machines don’t work or they swallow the transport card and you can’t find anyone at the station to ask them what to do, with the risk of losing the metro/bus because of it.”

“An alternative to paying in cash is to load the transportation card with 10 trip tickets. The closest place to my home is a tobacconist’s, when I get ready to pay they tell me that they only accept card payments from 35 euros, I have to find an ATM, take out some money for which they charge me commission, go back to the tobacconist’s and pay the 10 trip ticket. All this means a waste of time of 45 minutes.

I have to travel at a time when the tobacconist’s has already closed and I didn’t anticipate that the 10-trip ticket had been spent. I have to: walk to an ATM, take out cash, and find an open store where they change the ticket I have taken out of the ATM. This incident makes me arrive at my destination 1 hour and 30 minutes late.”

The vast majority of interviewees believe that an application that would allow them to buy metro/bus tickets in advance would solve many of the problems related to obtaining tickets, although they are wary of having to pay through the application or provide any kind of bank details.

Ideate.

Based on the participants’ responses, two paths to choose from quickly emerged:

Option 1. First, you would need to have acquired or previously owned a transportation card that would be linked to our app user. By choosing the desired route through Citymapper, it would allow us to pay for the tickets through the app and it would be automatically recharged in the transport card, giving us the option to choose only the bus or subway route or a combination of both options. The purchase would be made through an external and reliable payment gateway.

What is the disadvantage of this solution? Users would have to have a transport card valid in the city they are in or lose time in finding a point of sale to purchase it.

Option 2. The purchase process would be similar, except that it would not require a physical card, but would allow you to have the ticket directly on your mobile through the app after generating a QR code. Afterwards, the cell phone itself, with the QR code on the screen, would be scanned at the public transport entrance turnstiles. As in the previous option, the purchase would be made through a payment gateway. In addition, this option would allow printing the code in a physical format to avoid problems in case the scanner does not recognize the mobile screen.

What is the disadvantage of this solution? The entry turnstiles would have to be able to read the mobile device to give access.

Prototype.

After selecting the most viable option, in this case option 2, it was time to incorporate it into the application itself. For this purpose, a lofi protype was made:

Conclusions.

I considered it a very interesting opportunity to see how we could integrate new functionalities within a previously created application, which has been a real challenge.