Design Thinking & Benchmarking

Ironhack Amsterdam UX/UI Design

So let’s get start it the warm-up of the Bootcamp, within the 1st challenge provided to Ironhack at full steam!

Urban Go 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 is design thinking?

Design Thinking, at its core, is a protocol for solving complex problems and discovering new opportunities, by devising desirable solutions for clients/users.

The Design Thinking methodology

Design thinking suggests that for creating innovative, valuable products or ideas, based in 5 steps:

Empathize: Human-centered innovation begins with developing an understanding of customers’ or users’ unmet or inarticulate needs.

Define: synthesize the findings and define a issue statement from that.

Ideate: Use brainstorming techniques to generate a lot of ideas to solve the problem.

Prototype: Illustration of the ideas in a way to test it with people to see if it works.

Test: Show the concept solutions for people to see what is functional to refine it.

Insights

What problem to solve?
Difficult and delays in researching and purchasing public transport tickets

Who is the audience?
Leisure or business travelers, specially those who are going to the first time.

Who is the client’s competition?
Google Maps, Maps, Citymapper, Uber.

What’s the tone/feeling?
Be confident to have all-in-one simplified.

The Interview

Due to the core business at Urban Go (urban mobility), I’ve prepared open-ended questions which I may be oriented and focused on reach the point of what really matter to the users experience through the app, and what they would really expect for this service.

The keywords are: convenience / confidence / route planner / warranty / travel goals / experience / budget / comfort / priority / satisfaction / adventure

Some topics has been also important to reach out qualitative information or potential users, such as:

• The person’s background
• Their occupation
• Their use of technology
• Their travel goals
• Their motivations
• Their pain points

Some of the open-ended questions:

• How do you plan your travels?
• What do you expect when you search the routes while traveling?
• How do you get the public transport on place where you are based?
• Do you often get some information about the lowest fare rates before landing somewhere?
• How the technology can be useful to you while traveling, like Google Maps or Trip Advisor?

In fact, the most users who feels comfortable to purchase the tickets online the feeling of being ‘’VIP’’, within the experience to have their planner route done, as well coming together with their own tickets. Simply in just one feature.

Investigation

I’ve got interviewers based in different cultures and countries, such as Ireland, Brazil and Holland, and there’s also ways to get the tickets. In some places, the tourists can travel by an entire day purchasing only one ticket, or along couple of hours, being integrated to any kind of public transports. Other ones, it does not get the change back, then an ticket provided with credit to be used for the next transport. Or even some places can be only be purchased the tickets on-site.

So due to the answers, I noticed how much people are willing to get into of the best search engine apps (GPS) and optimizing the time instead of stopping anywhere to get information or purchase the tickets in-loco, and all of them are used to travel and make decisions before arrives.

Problem-solving

Due to my perceptions, the app must be friendly to the users in a way to show the greatest options of their journeys, and also to demonstrate confidence in few steps to purchase the tickets online, in advance, without having any more concerns.

The solutions founded are:

• Create an interaction between the interface and user with the facility to get already used with timing, pricing and also options for “accessible journey” or “walking less”
• Define contact lenses by QR Code when it’s provided online and integrate as an unique file, when the user can download immediately and/or receiving by email, in PDF.

Prototyping

The interface provide an unique ticket, in few steps, thus the greatest way I found to solve that issue it’s to compile all-in-one file by QR Code, so they don’t need to download or receive plenty of PDFs and check which one belongs to the next travel.

The app is able to calculate the total rate and provide options to enter by the lowest prices or less time.

My first experience

That was my first approach as learner of UX/UI Design, and see the importance of having perceptions beyond the eyes, and how the users might behave front the screens.

I was wondering myself how to brainstorm cases studies on my own, along the day and night, and I noticed that ideas (no matter how brilliant are) can come anytime (perhaps none at while I’m pushing myself), so the great way was trying to come natural, and after couple of hours from the interviews I got some insights.

I have got from this challenge the importance to follow the steps of design thinking, put effort to qualified the interviewers as potential customers, and identify the problems to get great results.