Design Thinking: Making traveling easier with CityMapper!
It is no secret that one of life’s greatest pleasures is traveling and with technology constantly evolving making traveling today simpler its no surprise more people are on the go. Before humans had the luxury of apps that plan your trip for you, surprise surprise, they had route it themselves. Luckily for us, we don’t have to carry annoying foldable maps everywhere thanks to apps like CityMapper.
CityMapper “making cities usable” is one of todays up and coming transportation services apps.
The apps main focus is making public transit more accessible and easier to use when on the go. Available for both Android and iPhone providing public transportation options to 72 cities ranging from Dallas to Tokyo. CityMapper plans your trip for you using a GPS system using a point A to point B interface, giving user a variety options that are budget friendly and travel efficient. Travel options range from bus to Uber or Lyft, making traveling easier and simpler than ever.
While CityMapper is innovating when it comes to getting you around town effectively one of the main bugs of the app has is having to purchase different public transport tickets from different channels. For example having to print bus tickets at multiple stations gets to be much of a hassle, especially on the go. Tasked with the designing a feature to add on to solve this hassle I interviewed 5 people who have had substance travel experience.
Questions
- Do you travel often?
- How do you use your phone when traveling?
- What has your experience been with planning trips using public transportation?
- What are some of your biggest stresses while Traveling?
My interviewees ranged from ages 21–27, they were all young professionals and minorities. Jay, a 27 team lead for a tech company, main concern while traveling is his security. “I don’t like having to pay at multiple vending machines” he says when traveling he wants to feel stress free. When I asked Tolu, a 26 traveling artist, about using public transportation they said booking trips have been a hit or miss which “changes the travel experience”. One thing was certain in all my interviewee’s their security and comfort was their main concern when traveling.
I believe adding on a safety feature such as an SOS button in case of emergency on the go and also a passport tool to link different legs from the user’s trip will fix the kink of having to buy or keep track of multiple tickets. This way all trips are grouped and making it easier if the user needed to add another ride on the go. The Passport Tool would also link directly to smart watch on user to keep user alert of their previously planned trip.
PROJECT SUMMARY
Through my process of design thinking I had a few light bulb moments that helped me better understand this new field that I am about to dive into. One of the things that stuck out to me was the empathy I had for each one of my Interviewees. When conversing with each of them it was easy to put myself in their shoes and be equally frustrated about some of their concerns when traveling. I also felt a sense of pride when creating my passport tool, it felt like I solved the problem as if I were one of the users on the GO. This exercise definitely helped me gain a scope of UX/UI that I didn't think I was going to receive through a simple task. Super excited to dive deeper into the UX/UI world!