DESIGN THINKING — Urban Go

Ironhack’s Prework: Clara Solozábal — Challenge 1

SOLVING A UX PROBLEM FOR A TRANSIT AND MAPPING APP

Mobility is one of the biggest challenges facing most cities in the world.

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.

The user selects the origin and destination points and the tool calculates the different available routes, the time and, the cost of each one of them.

Although the current product of Urban Go already solves some of the main problems of urban mobility, there is one pain point for many users: the different amount of public transport tickets the users have to purchase.

To find a way out we are going to use Design Thinking.

1. EMPHASIZE

The first goal is to understand who you’re designing for and how they feel about the next trouble:

Pricing or purchasing the correct ticket can become a real pain when you are abroad.

I have conducted five interviews with some friends and family members, which are regular public transport users both in their cities and when traveling abroad for tourism. I have told them about Urban Go and how this app solves the problems of urban mobility, but also I have explained to them that there is one pain point for many users: the different amount of public transport tickets the users have to purchase.

As I expected they are all concerned when they arrive at their destination and have to buy public transport tickets, and most of them are reluctant to use the app if this problem is not fixed.

2. DEFINE

THE PROBLEM

The main frustration of the user is not being able to carry out the process of buying tickets for each type of transport offered by the city through the app and have to face the language barrier, need to use other applications that probably sell tickets overpriced or deal with ticket machines.

3. IDEATE

THE SOLUTION

After brainstorming I come up with the next idea:

Create an easy feature for this app that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels.

4. PROTOTYPE

What I have learned…

At first, I thought this would be the hardest or most boring challenge, but while I was working on it I have completely understood how Design Thinking works, it has taught me to have the patience to understand and listen to the troubles or issues a user can experiment with the app, after this you completely empathize with them and it is easier to locate and identify problems.

Thank you for reading!

Clara.