Design Thinking

Ironhack’s Prework Challenge 1

Esraluijken
3 min readJan 3, 2021

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The client

Citymapper is a public transport app that offers a variety of transport options. In addition to public transport, it also shows other modes of transport including walking, cycling, driving, Uber and Felyx. Citymappers’s goal is to make transport sustainable and hassle free.

Task

I want to create a feature for the Citymapper app that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets through different channels.

Empathize

I’ve interviewed a group of people between 20 and 60 years old. This group consists of people who use public transport on a daily basis and also have experience with public transport abroad. I’ve prepared some questions with the aim to discover the inconveniences people normally face while traveling with public transport.

Before the interview began, I explained why I am conducting this interview and that there are no wrong answers. Here are a couple questions I asked:

Q: Which apps do you use in daily life to determine the fastest and cheapest route? Q: How do you experience these apps?

Q: How do you pay for your tickets? Do you like/dislike that and why?

Q; Can you tell me something about your experience with traveling in public transport abroad? How did you buy your tickets?

Dependent on the answer received from the respondents, I adjusted my prepared questions. I also left out questions in the interview if the respondent already answered this.

For the purpose of this article, I’ll only review the answers received that are relevant for the improvement of the Citymapper app. Because, for example: people who forget to charge their phones or a delay within public transport, unfortunately, is not something we want to solve here.

Some of the main problems mentioned by the target group:

‘’I am losing my individual tickets.’’

‘’I don’t know where to buy a ticket.”

‘’I don’t want an extra card in my wallet.‘’

‘’I often forget to check out and lose money.‘’

‘’I did pay but I don’t know if it is the right ticket.‘’

‘’When abroad, I don’t want to put money on a special public transport card, because when I leave there will still be money on the card that I can’t use anymore.‘’

‘’They first take twenty euros off my debit card while the ride is only three euros. After a while I get the difference back, but I don’t trust some companies with this.‘’

Define

I want to add a feature that allows people to pay for their planned trip and serves as proof of payment, so their entire journey is in one App.

Ideate

To solve this, brainstorming has yielded some new features for the Citymapper app. I have selected one idea to buy tickets through the app.

  • The user chooses the desired route and can immediately buy a suitable ticket.
  • The user can then indicate how many people he travels with.
  • The means of transport can also be adjusted per trip. In this way, the traveler can choose for which part of the journey he does or does not need a ticket.
  • He can pay for the tickets in the app.
  • The tickets are then saved under ‘my tickets’.
  • When traveling, he can use the tickets in the app to open the gates at stations or to show them to the inspector within public transport facilities.

Paper prototype

Low-fi wireframe

This was my first Design Thinking project and I had a lot of fun. Throughout this process I’ve learned that:

  • Other people can provide valuable (unexpected) insights by carefully listening to them.
  • It’s important to be well prepared for the interview. Good questions are a must.

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Esraluijken

Former teacher currently pivoting to a career in UX/UI Design.