Ironhack UX/UI Challenge 1: Design Thinking

Or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love Design Thinking

I never thought I’d know so much about my friends’ opinions on Public Transport.

For my first article about Ironhack’s UX Prework, I’ll be explaining the process of Design Thinking and the ensuing project for Citymapper I had to take on (and how I’ve been getting on my loved ones’ nerves by asking them if they prefer buses or trams at Christmas time).

First of all, what is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is an innovative design process that seeks to understand the user, their needs and thus the problems they face. To solve said problem, the exercise makes you empathise with the user. The designer then must ideate and prototype the idea they’ve had and, finally, test it with the user.

To put into application what we learned about design thinking and sketching, we were given a project to put us into a situation similar to one we might face when we start our careers after the Bootcamp.

The Client

CityMapper is a transport app created by a small London team. It aims to solve everyday problems to improve peoples’ experience of cities by making them more accessible through the simplification of public transport. This can translate to their feature that enables wheelchair users to see if their closest underground station is equipped with infrastructure that’ll accommodate their needs, a push notification telling you that the train that you usually take to work is out of service, or the app letting you know that you should get in the front of the metro car so your next change over is quicker.

However, feedback from its users has shown a problem: The number of different tickets one has to buy for a single journey. This brought on the idea to integrate a new feature into Citymapper which gives travellers the possibility to buy a single ticket for a full journey.

However, in ideating and designing this new feature, it’s important to take into account the users’ needs and experiences to design the feature to be as good as it possibly could be.

That’s where the process of Design Thinking comes in.

1. Empathise

Introspection

So as to prepare the rest of the project, the first step was to think about my own experience of public transport. I had already used the Citymapper app and have navigated a fair share of public transport networks, which made me think I had a pretty good idea of what to expect with user interviews. (Spoiler: I didn’t.)

It didn’t take long to realise that the beauty but also the difficulty when redesigning anything concerning public transport, is the fact that anyone and everyone uses it. This leads to a whole manner of experiences and possible problems, depending on the person.

This is where I find Citymapper to be a great fit. It’s smooth, it’s user friendly, and it’s funny but not too much, just enough to be reassuring. There are no complicated ways of interacting with it, there no-frills apart from the necessary aesthetics to make it nice to use and as they used to say in the early 2000s, it works right out of the box.

Therefore, this feature had to be universal and simple.

The Users

During the research stage, I decided to try and interview as broad of a spectrum as possible with a five-person limit and a pandemic to take into account.

In my sample of interviewees are:

• Kathleen F, 62 years old, living in a rural area and having grown up in a country that does not have good Public Transport infrastructure.
• Eulalie H, 22 years old. A student who grew up in a metropolitan area (Toulouse) and has only just moved to Angers to finish her studies. This prompted her to discover a smaller transport network in a city she doesn’t know.
• Hugo F, 25 years old. A journalist living in Paris, who’s the use of public transport changed drastically during the pandemic.
• Levi S, 26 years old. Lives in Oslo, a city known for its incredible public transport but also dematerialised payment as a societal norm.
• Martin M, 24 years old. Travels frequently around France and Europe to see his friends, is very tech-oriented.

2. Define

The Main Problem

From the different interviews that I lead and research about other public transport apps that I was able to find, it was clear to me that Citymapper’s new ticketing platform had to respond to users needs in 3 ways:

1. It had to be as easy, fluid and transparent to use as physical ticketing interfaces. Interviewees stated that it would only become their main option if it was an equal or better experience than using physical ticketing machines.
2. Paiement methods must be safe and comply with the first point, be seamless. No neverending confirmation or identity verification.
3. Have an option to have real-person-interaction if needs be.

Ideate

To implement all of these necessities in the design of the app’s new feature, I decided to include a payment method that emphasises the use of online platforms that are pre-saved in the user’s profile (Paypal came back often as the desired means of payment for other transport apps), all while retaining the option to use your credit card if it isn’t already saved in the users’ profile. Confirmation of these payments and receipt availability would be made through the platforms’ push notifications. Users have noted that over-zealous emails hinder their experience of other apps with online payment implementation.

In the context of buying transport tickets, this feature must have as few steps as possible. It must be possible to search for the journey you want to embark on, choose the preferred route (fastest, fewest changeovers etc…), have access to a “Purchases Journey with …” button, confirmation and then be taken directly to their ticket.

The option should be given to have access to a full FAQ as well as a simple ChatBot. This will accommodate users who have expressed a desire for interaction with a human, as well as older users who are willing to get in on the action of dematerialised navigation of daily life. Best of both worlds.

Above all, users must also be able to do all of these things on desktop. Though Citymapper is an App, as much work must go into this new feature on the website as the mobile app. All the people I interviewed during this process stated that when they plan their journey (which is the step where they generally would want to buy their ticket online) is on their computer.

Prototype

For the prototypes, I didn’t focus too much on Citymapper’s design when drawing because I didn’t want it to hinder or block creativity in case I got too caught up on what it would/should look like.

So as not to spend too much time on this one project. I also decided to concentrate on the mobile app for the prototyping.

I retraced my prototypes neatly to keep a clean record of my first project and for it to be easier to scan and upload.

In reality, I just wanted to draw a map.

Unfortunately, I was so caught up on drawing the maps that I forgot to add the button that was meant for the ChatBot. Which, in hindsight, might have made the UI a bit too complicated to navigate.

The Takeaway

I learned a few unexpected things in the application of Design Thinking. The first of which being, if you want to or not, you go into a project with an idea of the outcome. In this case, I thought I knew what people would want out of this feature. I didn’t?. I was also quite surprised by what some people’s concerns were.

For instance, I would not have expected that being able to talk to an employee of a public transport network would be a reason to not use online ticketing. Many interviewees stated that even if a feature enabled them to do what they needed to do on their devices, they would continue buying a ticket the old way purely in case they needed the option to ask a question to a human being. It was quite heartwarming to hear that people still want human interaction in public transport during a pandemic.

Another thing that I learned during this project is how long User Interviews can take. When thinking about the questions I was going to ask, I decided to ask several specific questions to get to the crux of the matter but also so they could see where I was going logically. This led to one comfortable thing: interviewees would often answer the next question naturally before I even had the time to ask it.

This was an interesting subject for a new way of thinking. Though having to ask people to take time out of their day and knowing I had to write this article was a bit stressful, it was quite a straight forward and logical process. It also took me out of my comfort zone knowing that I had to put myself out there and explain my thought process. Overall, working through this project ended up not being as stressful or difficult as I initially believed. It was almost reassuring because after all, the aim of this experience is to do it every day!

I don’t think I’ll mind doing that at all.