Challenge 1: Design Thinking
In this prework we had to come up with solutions for a common problem users face when traveling and using public transportation in different cities. It is a pretty complex system and changes from place to place.
For this challenge I chose Citymapper company. Founded by Azmat Yusuf in 2011 Citymapper is an transport app for people to go from A to B.
The Problem: for many users public transportation can be really complicated and hard to figure each complex way of buying tickets on vendor machines — that actually a lot of times are out of service.
Process: after going through the interview process I started to gather the information collected and combine with simple solutions that would be easy for the user to use and understand.
Requirements:
- Create a feature for this app that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels.
- Users already have all their information on the app, they will neither need to login nor enter any data when paying/checking-out.
Brainstorm: first I thought the user could first have to go through a application process only one time and connect the account to their bank/Paypal and others. It would be somehow connected to the local transportation service and would generate a code for the user to travel from A to B (or more stops when necessary).
Solution: a traveling pass where you could add the currency of your choice, so when you are traveling simply open your account and it would take the ticket price out of your balance. As a credit you can easily keep adding more, and also you could have discounts if you pay in advance for your tickets, for example, in Berlin you can have a monthly card, with the pass if you buy in advance you can save some money purchasing it for a bit less. Another possibility would be paying a premium subscription — the more you ride, the more you save. By doing that encourage people taking public transportation and help to do less harm to the environment.
Conclusion: it is a complex process to imagine all the implications a simple feature could have. I was thinking about how it would work to actually implement it in real life and I must admit it's quite a challenge. I could get a deeper sense of the user's needs and specially the thinking process of solving a problem. It wasn't required to actually try to make it in real life, if it would be a real project I'm quite curious what and how long would take for a group of people making it a reality.
