Challenge 01: Design Thinking
UrbanGo is an app created to solve public mobility offering the best routes, connections, and cheapest options for its users. The idea is to provide multiple route options and transport within the Silicone Valley area and also allow users to know the time length and cost of their ride.
The pain point is the number of tickets that users need to buy in order to make the connections, adding situations like long lines at kiosks or defective vending machines and taking into count that its not a very eco-friendly system.
By knowing this, the idea is to implement an app feature that will simplify and improve the service.
Empathize
To get a better understanding of how this situation affects the user, I interviewed 7 close friends and asked them the following questions:
1- Do you use public transportation in your city?
2- If you travel to another city or country, what’s the best way for you to move around?
3- Do you use a specific app for this process?
4- What type of ticket do you prefer? Digital or Physical?
5- How do you usually purchase your tickets?
6- What is your experience like with connecting routes?
Define
1- Do you use public transportation in your city?
2- If you travel to another city or country, what’s the best way for you to move around?
100% of the respondents use at least one of the following options:
Train / Subway / Walk / Taxi / Bus
3- Do you use a specific app for this process?
Google maps / Uber / Transit / Waze / iPhone wallet if the user has a ticket there
4- Which type of ticket do you prefer? Digital or Physical?
5- How do you usually purchase your ticket?
70% Online / 30% at the station
6- What is your experience like with connecting routes?
In general, interviewees have had a great experience with the exception of internet connection failure.
Ideate
1- Allow the user to buy digital tickets directly through the app with the routes they need and distinguish each route by color to reflect every ride merged under one single bar code.
2- If there’s internet failure, offer the possibility to be charged once service is restored.
3- Offer optional physical cards for users in case of scanning failure or battery issues.
4- Include an optional feature for an “All day pass” if the user has too many connections planned for the day.
Prototype
Key Learning
I enjoyed the research part of the project, it allowed me to evaluate other perspectives that I wasn’t considering at first glance. At the same time, by having the interviewees responses in mind I was able to gain further insight for the ideation process.
One of the doubts that I had was that it may not be easy to connect every transportation platform to the app but it is not a crazy idea, especially if the users trust the system and makes it easy to have his/her payment information in the same place.
The idea of going fully digital for this feature was given by the interviewees since 100% of them buy their tickets online and prefer to have everything digital. Even though I had to be inclusive and allow users to have a physical card as an option due to external factors that may interfere with their process.
I had too much fun exploring ideas for this project, maybe not all of them are applicable, but it’s worth giving it a try.
Thank you for reading!