Challenge 1: Design Thinking — Citymapper
About Citymapper
Citymapper is a navigation app that shows transport options based on a defined route in a supported city, available in Available in all the major cities of the world.. All we have to do is define our point A e point B, so the app integrates data for different urban means of transport such as public transport, walking, cycling and cabs.
About the Problem
Despite solving some of the main challenges of urban mobility, there is one pain point for many users: the different amount of public transport tickets the users have to purchase.
Public transport tickets come in paper or plastic cards. Very often buying different public transport tickets is necessary to go from point A to B. And the process of buying these tickets can be very annoying (queues, vending machines that don’t work, etc).
Finally, things like pricing or purchasing the correct ticket can become a real pain when you are abroad.
Design Thinking Process
Empathize
Seeking to better understand the user, I thought about questions to interview 5 users from different backgrounds and ages between 23–55 years old, who are heavy users of their phones when traveling. The main issues found:
- Most of them use just Uber or cabs, because they are afraid of getting lost and don't want to waste time downloading and learning different transport apps or buying tickets in different places.
- Most of them are afraid of using their credit cards to buy tickets in different transport apps because of security issues.
- Google Maps is the main app used anywhere they travel to.
Define
Based on the user understanding, I conclude that the main challenge is to create some feature that allows the user to centralize all the tickets and transport expenses necessary to complete its journey.
Ideate
A possible solution would be creating an in app centralized payment method. So, they would be more confident to trust its credit card data to only one main app (like we usually do using PayPal to buy stuff online). When defined a route, the user would have the option to "BUY ALL TICKETS". So, the app would generate one or more QR codes to be used in different transports or integrate itself with other transport apps (like Uber).
Prototype
Conclusion
It was challenging but at the same time very handy, taking in consideration that I'm a heavy user of this kind of app. But this challenge made me clarify that is all about people's behavior than only transport planning. I could see how the user-centered design can simplify our daily activities just by looking and hearing the people involved.
