Ironhack’s Prework: Morgane Favchtein — Challenge1
Introduction
As part of my prework training at Ironhack, I was asked to apply design thinking process to Citymapper and propose a new feature.
Do you know this app ? It is the ultimate transport app ! Actually I use it everyday since I did my internship in London in 2015 and now that I live in Paris. Easy to use, it was a life changing app for me. Indeed, it helps you find your way in public transport and also allows you to see alternatives like Velib, Uber, Heetch and even by foot. You can register your home and work addresses to ease your commuting path. You have lots of features within such as transport disruptions information, travel time estimation and also price that it will cost you.
We will see how we can implement a new feature in the following case study.
Empathize
I interviewed 5 persons, male and female from 23 to 60. Some are commuters, some are just using public transportations a few times a year.
I asked them about their last journey on public transports. Most of them had a pretty good experience, no problems and not too crowded.
Indeed, with Covid-19, there are less people on the trains, buses, RER and subway.
So, I dug a bit more about their general commuter’s path. And, the general feelings about public transports were that it was:
- expansive: especially when the service is not good
- painful: especially when there are issues on the line, you are blocked and you don’t have any perspective on what is the problem and when it’s going to be solved “the day starts badly”
- late
“The longer the journey, the more likely I am to be late”, one of my interviewee said.
- crowded
- stressful
- not up to you: you don’t have control and it’s annoying
I moved to the second part of my interview by asking them about the experience of buying a ticket.
As I said previously, among the interviewees there are commuters, and others that are just using public transportations a few times a year.
For the commuters, most of them have a Navigo card (they pay a subscription monthly) I felt that most of them had no issues regarding the payment. However, the general pain point was when you had to queue to charge your card at the beginning of the month.
For the ones who buy only one ticket at the time, it was nice to see that they had different experiences, most of them prefer to buy on vending machines as it is quick and easy to use (when not crowded) but one of my interviewee prefers to ask to the ticket office as most of the vending machines are not working at his station.
But it seemed that the vending machines and the ticket office were the only solutions they knew about.
So, I asked about how their experiences were abroad ? How did they do when traveling in another city ?
It appeared that paying and traveling in public transports abroad were a real pain point and they asked themselves:
- What is the best between a subscription for several days and buying single use tickets ? Is it possible to get around the city by foot or do you really need public transports ?
- You have to queue a lot, lose your time and yet you went there to visit
- Does this ticket include other means of transport?
As the information is mostly unclear, the majority of my interviewee is taking time beforehand to get to know what is the most suitable way of commuting abroad by doing some research online. Most of them said that as they didn’t know how it worked, and searching for the right info was really time consuming.
The general feelings were that it was stressful, crowded, costly and time-consuming.
Most of them would like to have all the right information about the journey, the price and best deals included but also buy your tickets beforehand in the same site or app to avoid stress when traveling abroad.
Define
I feel that both if you are in your own city or abroad, the major pain point is to buy a ticket in a crowded space or to have to queue up to charge your card.
And other pains come into consideration when you are going abroad, you don’t know the route and don’t know if your ticket will hold different public transport means.
And that’s how CityMapper came in with a new feature…
Ideate
My first solution to avoid crowded space and vending machines, the best solutions would be to buy tickets online directly within the app so you can have the best deal proposed by CityMapper for one journey.
My second solution is inspired from the London Transport System “Oyster card” where you can “pay as you go” . To avoid paying for many tickets a day or by means of transportation, you get a daily cap and can travel as much as you like in one day across all transport services.
What is a cap ? A cap limits how much you pay for all your journeys in one day or week.
You can make as many journeys as you like and when all your fares add up to a certain amount, they won’t charge you more (your fare is automatically capped). Always touch in and out.
For example if you are travelling between zone 1 and 2, 6 times a day in Paris (morning, midday and evening), usually you will have 6 métro tickets x 1,9€ it would cost you 11,4€. If you have a cap you will just have a the same fare as a “Navigo Jour deux zones” : 7,5€.
You can choose also the weekly cap.
Your phone will be connected and will be like a navigo card you will just have to tap so you can check in and check out at the doors.
Prototype
My Prototype will cover the “Pay as You go” for Paris as I think it is more innovative and more likely to covers our customers pain points.
They won’t have to buy tickets at the vending machines, to queue or to buy single use tickets for each means of transportations. Even if they are just going for a round trip in métro it would be the same price as they were buying at the vending machines.
You pay only for the journeys you make!
Let me show you…
What I learned…
The more simple, the better.
At the begginning I though I would let the customers choose for the option he wanted between one way, round trip or “Pay as you go”. But I realised that letting no choice (at least one choice of course) is the best way to have a better user experience as he would not be lost or confused by the choices he has.
