How UrbanGo can solve the problems of urban mobility
UrbanGo is a real-time journey planner helping you get from points A to B by public transport in the fastest time possible. Their goal is to solve problems of urban mobility by offering the quickest and cheapest public and private transport routes to their users. After selecting the starting point and destination the app will provide different routes with the estimated time and cost. Besides offering the fastest and cheapest options, UrbanGo aims to create a mobile ticketing feature that is easy to understand and helps travelers to pay for their journey. Because a large percentage of travelers now use their mobile devices to experience seamless travel when using the public transportation links, I began to interview and listen to what those users had to say. Based on their feedback I was able to determine why buying tickets was such a hassle for most travelers.
Unfortunately not all countries are using interconnected ticketing systems like the one used here in the Netherlands (OV card) and so in order for a lot of people to reach their destination they still have to combine buying more than one ticket offered by various transportation channels. The lack of kiosks or TVM increases the time they spend waiting in queues. Having the possibility to purchase multiple travel tickets in one place would be a brilliant solution to all their problems. The market today currently offers apps including Google Maps, Citymapper and TripGo which have features offering different multimodal routes showing estimated time and cost to the traveler. Having the ability to offer the possibility of buying tickets for multimodal routes in one place would be an important addition to these apps and so transitioning towards using the UrbanGo app.
People spend too much time buying tickets
During the interviews I found out what the biggest struggles were when purchasing a travel ticket. The problem was greater especially abroad or places where someone was buying a ticket for the first time. Some ticket machines are not easy to use and require a lot of information that user may not know. On top of that some names can be so difficult to spell and sometimes in languages that people have trouble with.
“Have you ever tried to type those crazy French metro stationnames? If you make just one mistake you will not be able to finish your task.”
One of the main complains while traveling abroad is also a language barrier.
“When I was traveling in Asia, I ended up going to places I did not want to. People could not understand what I was asking for. I literally spend long hours sitting in the bus going to wrong directions.”
Travelers also mentioned the issue of occasionally forgetting their travel cards and so would be a huge benefit for them to choose the app, as they are less likely to forget their mobile phone. “It’s just more convenient, I have lost my tickets a few times but never my phone. It can be that I search for a ticket for more than a minute, while I always hold my phone in a visible place”
Based on these findings I formulated the following design challenge: What is the best way I can make it easier for travellers to get the right public transport ticket?
Self-ticketing is the mobile version of a ticket vending machine. With this mobile ticketing method, travelers are in possession of a valid ticket before boarding a vehicle. Depending on the transport operator travelers can buy different kinds of tickets. An e-ticket becomes available on the traveler’s phone and can be shown when boarding or upon ticket inspection. By using the UrbanGo app it is possible to see the journey cost or travel including discounts. Mobile ticketing solutions: can be described as the process whereby travelers can order, pay for, manage, obtain and/or validate travel tickets. Mobile Self-ticketing solutions enables travelers to use on-screen identification technologies such as QR-codes to enter public transport.
“It’s much faster to get my tickets through the app. Having so many tickets to use can be very annoying. I like when I have it all in one place.”
Self-service is attractive for consumers as they feel empowered to gain more knowledge and perform actions on their own. People also like to avoid asking for help in order to solve their travel problems.
Benefits:
The most beneficial factors to the UrbanGo app are that using a mobile phone device as opposed to going to the ticket office or ticket machines makes travel so much easier for the consumer, especially in situations where the language barrier is an issue. In addition to this a travellers phone would always be in their possession as opposed to a travel card which can occasionally be forgotten, lost, damaged or invalid.
During this excersise I have learned that design thinking is human-centered. If you don’t understand the person who will be using the thing you’re trying to create, it simply won’t work.
