Get me somewhere, Citymapper!

Or how to employ Design Thinking in order to expand and innovate inside public transit app

Citymapper is an application offering an insight into an urban transportation and transit maps. They goal is to assist a user to find fastest and cheapest routes through the variety of both public and private transportation vehicles — from shared bikes, scooters, mopeds, taxis to public transport. The calculation of the route is made in real time by using a location service on your device and providing you with immediate travel routes and transport options. Citymapper was founded in 2011 in London by Azmat Yusuf and this is currently the only city out of 41 covered cities in the world which offers a ticket purchase through the Citymapper Pass.

DEFINING A PROBLEM

Moving through big cities and metropoles can be a complicated and exhausting endeavor. Having an app like Citymapper can be a crucial help and compass for navigating and planning your daily or tourist routes. Citymapper already possesses diverse and elaborate features — multimodal transit to help with directions, various transport options, time needed to reach destination, ecological feedback, issues on road, voice assistant etc. The only thing missing is an integrated payment option which would enable a user to easily pay for any of chosen transport options. Main competitors on the market are Google Maps that stands for its simplicity and coverage, as well as local BVG app that already offers a ticket purchase for public transportation in Berlin. But the wish of Citymapper is to develop all in one transport app that would enable not only a current transport options but payment for offers.

As a first challenge for the IronHack Bootcamp Prework we got the task to create a feature for this app that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels. I will try to address this issue and offer a solution that would ease the complicate purchase of transport tickets.

EMPATHIZE — WHO ARE USERS AND WHAT DO THEY WANT

User of the App is anyone who regularly or occasionally uses public transportation options in order to get to desired location or to explore getting around the city. It can be a city resident or a tourist. Main goal of any user is to have the most efficient and cheapest solution. In order to understand and meet their desires, I posed a series of questions that helped me define the problem and investigate into solution. As my audience I choose 2 residents and 2 tourists that have already been in Berlin.

I posed questions such as: What is your daily routine when you move through the city with public transport? Do u use other transport options? What are the obstacles you come across? Did Corona pandemic change your habits? How do you pay your tickets? How would you wish to pay? If there would be an App that would have all travel and payment options in one would you use it?

My findings were that residents of Berlin use both of competitor Apps, BVG and Google Maps, while tourists are inclined to use Google Maps as a more known and secure solution. Both residents and tourists said that obstacle of using a Google Map is having to buy ticket on site what in current pandemic situation is an option they would prefer not to do. So, for the public transportations, such as metro and bus, residents use the BVG app which has an integrated payment system. Another obstacle for residents is, that if they want to use other transport options such as shared bikes, scooters, Uber or Taxi they would need to have each App separately and make payment individually. They usually choose one of the options and integrate it in their daily routine. Tourists said they were more confused with the options that different cities give. For example, if they already use CarGo in their native land they will not be inclined to download an Uber app for a tourist visit and vice versa. So, because of that, they are more inclined to use city’s public transportation and have a sat back for paying on site. They all said that having one App with integrated transport and payment solution would be their preferred way for traveling across the city.

Overall obstacles:

• Overwhelmed with too many apps and options
• Switching from app to app, as well as witching from app and paying on site is time consuming
• If buying tickets on site: the pain of repetition and multiple transactions, fear of infection, language issues
• Feeling frustrated for not having a simplified version
• Tourists: missing information on local apps and payments, language barrier in understanding different travel zones, issues with different currency when paying on site
• If there is unified app they would like to know how is charged and if they are paying more for it

IDEATE — SEARCHING FOR SOLUTION

There are few possible scenarios that would enable ticket purchase through Citymapper app

• External transfer to other applications such as Uber, Lime, Nextbike etc. via buy button. As u press buy button inside Citymappers it would directly open a purchasing page in one of the offered apps. The downside of this option is that you have to download all available apps in the city in order to buy ticket
• Integrating Citymapper inside one of Fare Payments-as-a-Service providers. Integrating an app to external platform would be the most efficient solution, but as Citymapper offers a diverse possibility for transportation it would mean that all the providers inside Citymapper app would need to be integrated as well, either separate or inside Citymapper app

• In-app payment (Paypal, Apple Pay, Google pay or Klarna, Paydirekt, Direct debit) the ticket results either in QR-code or invoice. Cittymaper would have to have agreement with all the transport companies represented in the app.
• TOKEN/TAN system — this would be my imaginary solution in which the Citymapper would contact your BankApp in order to create one-time Token or Tan password that would be used to directly withdraw money from your account and give you an QR ticket. In ideal state you would only need to enter two passwords for secure payment — one of you already existing app and one for the transaction. This model presupposes that Citymapper app already have a billing contract with extern providers that don’t need unlocking action such as BVG, DB, Uber, Taxi, etc.

PROTOTYPE

Token/Tan system would be an ideal solution for the fast and easy ticket purchase. Although at the moment it looks a bit impossible and would need a big refurbishment from both Apps, for me it was interesting to imagine it. In a raw prototype, as you enter Citymapper app an choose your starting and ending points, you will be presented with transport options as already given in the app. After you choose your preferable transport option and see the amount for the trip, you would click on PAY button given under the map. After pressing a PAY button your Citymapper app will directly open your BankApp and you would first need to enter your security code, then generate one time pass and finally get the QR ticket.

CONCLUSION

This challenge already throwed me into a fire of UX design and my biggest issue was to explore all possible ways of E-commerce and online payment. It took me a while to understand what already exists and how does it function. My impression is that if I had an expert in this field it would be even easier to get into an innovative thinking which would correspond to the ultimate desires of my interviewed audience, as they all wished for the simplest and one touch solution. Other parts of assignment where fun and enjoyable.