Citymapper is a public transit and mapping startup. Their goal is to solve the problems of urban mobility by offering the quickest and cheapest public and private transport routes to their users.
In the Citymapper mobile app, the users select a starting point and a destination, and the app provides different multimodal routes with the estimated time and the cost of them.
There is one pain point for many users: the different amount of public transport tickets the users have to purchase. My challenge was to find a solution to this problem through the design thinking process.
Empathize
The users of this app are not those that already commute daily in the city, but tourists that are new to the city and to its public transportation system.
To better understand the users’ needs, I interviewed five people that live in European cities and travel often. Two of them had just moved to a new city.
What I learned about the users:
1. When traveling in a new city, all of them used Google Maps to find how to get to their destination.
2. When users were traveling in a new city, they often chose to walk, so they could sightsee. Another user mentioned they prefered walking long distances or taking a taxi/uber, to figuring out an unfamiliar public transport system.
3. Regarding the purchase of tickets, one user said they would check where and how to buy tickets on the homepage of the public transport provider. Several users had clear expectations on where to buy tickets in a foreign city: get metro and train tickets at the station, and bus and tram inside the vehicle.
4. One user desired to pay for tickets through an app for comfort and safety reasons. For another, getting information on the cost of public transports and having links to buy those tickets would impact the decision on the route.
To the information from this interviews I added my own experience, observations and interactions with tourists in Lisbon:
- There are often long queues to buy train tickets.
- It is not obvious which type of ticket to buy.
- On several train stations, it’s not clear where to buy tickets, and there are ticket machines on just one side of the rails.
- On some train stations, one has to swipe a ticket card on a gate to get in, on others there are no gates, just a device to hold the ticket card to.
- On some public transport,s you only have to swipe your ticket card just when getting in and not when getting out.
- At the tram it is not possible to pay with a card, only with money. Sometimes the train ticket machines don’t accept credit cards.
Define
I understood that the intricacies regarding how and where to purchase tickets kept people from using public transports. My goal was to simplify the process of paying for public transport, so the user can make the most of their time while traveling.
Problem statement: Francesco is a young worker traveling who needs an easier way to pay for public transport, so he can enjoy the new city more.
Ideation
In this challenge I was instructed to forget security matters or practicalities, (login and data for paying/checking-out) when making up solutions.
I used the Crazy 8's methodology to come up with possible solutions to improve mobility.
SOLUTION
The most efficient way to solve the problem of buying tickets is by eliminating tickets. The users uses the app to directly pay for their ride, without purchasing tickets (physical or digital).
More specifically, as the user enters the bus/tram or the metro/train station, they hold their phone to the payment reader (to the place where they would scan their ticket), and they are charged the value of the ride.
With this feature, the user does the entire journey from starting point to destination through the app. First the user selects the destination and gets different routes, then chooses a route and follows all the route’s steps, including the payment.
This solution is inspired by two great Portuguese technologies: Via Verde, a method of electronic payment which allows the user to drive through the toll without stopping, and MBway, which allows cardless and contactless payment, through the user’s phone.
The app could have other features that would help users, such as just using the pay feature if they are familiarized with the route, or providing information on all past travels.
This feature can be used in several cities, including the user’s hometown. This would solve the problem of downloading an app and creating an account on app to use just for a few days, which one user mentioned.
Here is the Design StoryBoard of the feature:
Prototype
Finally, here is the picture of the prototype:
Test (coming later…)
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This challenge was fun because I got to rethinking the need of something used everyday for a long time. The fact that tickets have been around for very long does not mean they are needed, especially for such a trivial thigs as riding the bus.
