Case study: How to improve UX in an urban mobility app?
By: Victoria Kulaeva
Tags: UX Design, Case Study, Ui Ux Design, UX, Studying

As a student of the world famous bootcamp “Ironhack” in UX/UI Design, I do one of the homework assignments to optimize the mobile app for the first time. If you are interested in this process, the results of the interviews about the transport navigation apps, ideas for developing this kind of applications, and how I managed to complete the task — read on.

So, we have the client “UrbanGo” app. “UrbanGo is a public transit and mapping startup based in Silicon Valley. Their goal is to solve the problems of urban mobility by offering the quickest and cheapest public and private transport routes to their users”.

What’s the problem?

The problem is that while the app already solves many of the urban mobility issues, there is still a pain point for many users, such as the need to buy different public transport tickets by different channels. The process of buying these tickets can be very annoying (queues, vending machines that don’t work, etc.). And when you are abroad it can often be really difficult to understand.

My task is to create a feature for this app that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels.

First of all, to complete the task, of course I was going to download the application to study its interface and functionality. But it was not in my app store, so I downloaded the citymapper. The assignment said that the functionality of the two applications is the same.

How can we optimize the app?

Design Thinking approach offers us the following steps: empathize, define, test, ideate.

Empathize, then Define

At first I tried to answer the following questions myself:

What problem are you solving? The problem is that the user has to spend a lot of time buying the different amount of public transport tickets by different channels. Sometimes it takes time and nerves in case it’s a problem with vending machines, or if transport arrives and you need a ticket immediately, if you do not have time to buy it, you need to wait for the next arrival.

Who is your audience? Most likely these are active users of mobile phones, most likely people under 50. Statistics say that the majority of smartphone owners (77%) regularly use navigation apps. Just as it is clear from the application interface, its users are people using public transport. Accordingly, the audience is narrowing, but it is still huge.

Who is your client’s competition?

Google Maps, citymapper etc.

After my own reasoning, it’s time to conduct interviews with people who fit the target audience of the application to understand how things really are. Since this is a study assignment, 5 people are enough for me. But, of course, the more the better.

What results did the interview show?

The age of the interviewee varies from 23 to 37. These people travel a minimum 2 times a year, a maximum ¾ of the year. In the cities they usually use the metro and bus. All of them said that they study information about the transport system in the country where they plan to travel in advance, on the Internet in various instructions and on forums. 80% of them said that “often it’s not very easy to understand the transport system in a new country”, “i don’t know which tariffs they have — it’s not clear”, “in every new country you have to spend time to understand the transport system and rules — it’s annoying”.

Thus, in the process of interviewing, I found the first pain points of users-travelers. They don’t want to spend a lot of time in order to understand the transport system of the new country, what kind of tickets are, which one is more profitable to take, whether it is possible to pay for transport inside or it is necessary to buy a ticket in advance, whether it is necessary to keep the ticket or it can be thrown away, whether it is possible to pay with a card or is it necessary local currency… Of course, for locals it is not a pain, but when you travel, you have to admit, sometimes it takes a lot of time to understand everything about the transport system.

100% of the interviewee pay for tickets by credit card, and all of them want to do it the easy way — to pay with credit card or by apple pay inside the bus or in the entrance of the metro. This is the second pain point. They don’t want to waste time queuing for a ticket or looking for a ticket machine and then figuring out which ticket to get, what tickets are there, how to pay, etc.

The most popular navigation app used by my interviewees abroad is Google Maps (100% of interviewees). Why do they love this particular app?

It works everywhere, it’s an international app— 80% of interviewees. It’s very easy to understand — 80% of interviewees. They provide useful reviews for restaurants and their time of working — 60% of interviewees.

60% of the respondents also cited the Russian application 2GIS as an example of their favorite navigation app, and, in addition to the obvious functions of showing routes, noted the possibility of using this application without the Internet (since there you can download all information about the city and routes in advance) and the fact that the app marks where the entrance to the subway or to any institution is.

What the respondents don’t like in Google Maps?

One of the pain points, as interviewees told, is that this app does not always show updated information that you can rely on, it often makes mistakes, and does not account for traffic jams or road repairs — 80% of interviewees. “It doesn’t work offline and works very badly in case if there’s bad internet” — 60% of interviewees.

Thereby, conducting the interview gave me a clear understanding of what is most important to users and what they would like to change. It was incredibly interesting, because the interview really gave me a lot of ideas for implementation and a clear vision of where to go and what to pay attention to. Well, let’s go further.

Ideate and prototype

The problems that I plan to solve is the user’s unwillingness to spend time looking for information about the transport system in a new country and buying tickets, as well as distrust of information in the app due to errors made by the app itself. Thus, I want to help the user save time on these tedious processes and create opportunities for the application to always show relevant and accurate information.

What really matters to users, according to my survey:

1. They want to feel safe and informed. They want to know how to buy a ticket, which ticket to buy in a new country, where to pay for a ticket, whether they need a card or local currency, etc. And they don’t want to waste a couple of hours of their time on it before going to a new country. The application can give them this as a brief background information on the rules of travel in a given country.

In this application there is a section “information” where the user can find answers to the most common questions. The function “comments” has also been added, where the user leaves comments about innovations, about up-to-date information, and in the comments he can ask an individual question or help someone and answer a question.

2. They want to save their time and nerves.They want to pay for tickets by credit card or by apple pay inside the bus or in the entrance of the metro, or, in an ideal situation via the app.

I had several ideas for this task, and after interviewing my friends, I chose the “Wallet” function where the user can store a ticket purchased online through this application, activate a ticket or delete it. After 24 hours, tickets go to the basket, where you can still view them if necessary, they are deleted from the basket after a month.

3. They want an accurate source of information that they can trust. They want updated, accurate information that they don’t need to double-check. In this case, I want to refer to the Russian app named “Yandex maps”, which did an excellent job with this task. And respondents cited this app as an example in connection with the problem of “irrelevant belated information”. The fact is that this app has a comment function and real users, city residents can write comments about, for example, road works, road closures, any emergencies or transport innovations. It really helps a lot for people using a car or public transport.

To accomplish this task, I added the ability for users to leave comments in the application regarding traffic incidents, traffic jams, road closures and other emergency situations that are on your route. A warning will be shown before you start driving to give you the opportunity to change your route if necessary. Users also have the option to leave a voice comment, which will be converted to text.

Several prototypes were made for each problem and the above prototypes were selected as a result of tests with the same 5 people. Although, I understand that this is not the bests prototypes. And I would like to finalize them. However, time is running out and I need to move on.

A few key things that I learned throughout this process:

You can have any reasonable opinion about what is important in the process of using this or that application, but this is just your individual experience. It does not mean at all that this is also important for other people. To see the full picture, you just need to interview at least 5 people, preferably more of course. Only then you can create an effective system or optimize it. Interviewing gives so many great ideas! People are much more attentive than you thought. Users will tell you everything about the product, all the pros and cons. And thanks to this you will understand what can be improved. Then, by prototyping and testing the ideas, you will understand what is the best way to implement it. Prototyping is really cool. After all, you do not need to spend a lot of time and effort to understand what works best. The survey will show what works better, and then you just need to improve the options until it’s good enough, when there is nothing to add and nothing to subtract.

Good luck everyone along the way UX/UI Design. And I will continue to study in order to do better.