Design Thinking Challenge: City Mapper

The message from the splash screen is very clear, City Mapper is “The ultimate transport app”. It is not a recent fact that transport planning apps have become an integral part of our everyday life, they have made our displacement more effective and informed. At the same time transport planning apps market has increased and currently offering a product that stands out of the crowd has become extremely challenging.

Why should City Mapper be the ultimate? What really makes it the “look-no-further” choice in terms of transport app on your personal device? Is there any margin of improvement for the current app user experience? Are there any flaws?

The exercise described in this article does not intend by any means to answer the above questions but explores potential solutions or improvements to the app user experience for one particular user’s problem, in-app tickets purchase, in a predominantly tourists-oriented area such as the South of Gran Canaria.
In this part of the island there is just one public transport operator (Guaguas Global) offering a mobile app that currently does not allow in-app tickets purchase.

Interviews to users

The interviews conducted to gather the main pain-points were made to passengers while waiting for the bus at two stops “San Fernando” and
“Faro de Maspalomas”, the first one frequented by a mix of residents and tourists while the second one primarily by tourists. The interview involved six individuals (three residents and three tourists) aiming to provide a comprehensive analysis of travel itineraries and tariffs variation between residents and non-residents.

Location of the users’ interviews bus stops

The interview questions were:

• What is your travel destination today? Is it a return or one way trip? If you are returning in this area are you getting off at the same stop on your way back?
• What process did you go through to buy the bus ticket?
• Are you a resident/frequent traveller card owner? How did you find the ticket purchasing or card top up process?
• How do you think the current tickets purchasing process could be improved? Any ideas or suggestions.

The summaries of the answers to the questions are:

1. All tourists users travelled either to Maspalomas beach or other touristic destinations on the island, most tourists reference points for bus stops are either shopping centres or their holiday hotel, with trips returning to the same bus stop. Locals either travel back to bus stops located outside the touristic areas or towns located on the south of the island in the immediate interior, these were mostly home-work or home-beach commuters.
2. All tourists users buy the ticket directly on board, they say the destination and pay the fare directly to the driver either in cash or with card. Having the exact fare amount in cash is not mandatory but it may happen that change is not available. Some users reported that payments made through card are sometimes rejected and when paying in cash they didn’t receive any change because it wasn’t available, causing frustration. Some tourists reported communications issues with the driver at the moment of saying the travel destination or understanding the fare price, either because they couldn’t speak any English or Spanish or felt uncomfortable trying it in a foreign language. All residents interviewed used the residents card that allows users to travel for free. Even if using this card when getting on the bus the destination must be specified to the driver and the card validated, just like any other contactless card.
3. As said, all residents interviewed used a residents card to travel. Since February 2023 public bus transport is free on the island for residents making more than 15 bus journeys monthly, for this reason cards have to be monthly re-validated. Monthly validation can’t be done online or on the bus but only at certain bus stations located across the island. The process of residents transport cards acquiring and validation was generally described as cumbersome and old-fashioned.
4. Both tourists and residents agreed on the fact that the entire fare purchasing process should be handled by a mobile app, the reasons given by the different users group differed. Tourists would find it easier and less stressful planning their journey ahead of time, with a clear understanding of the fare price, and avoiding hasty searches for alternative payment methods in case of no change available or rejection of card payments. Residents say that they would benefit from an in-app residents card use monitoring and monthly validation process. That would allow them to track the number of journeys left to keep the free fares perk and avoid the travel to the bus station offices for the renewal.

Problems definition

If we have got to define in a few statements which are the main problems faced by users we could say that:

“Tourists find it hard to spatially locate the origin/destination bus stop and to get an idea of the expected fare amount since their spatial reference points are either touristic attractions, names of known beaches, hotels or commercial activities.”

“Tourists find it hard to communicate in a foreign language, to speak to the driver or to understand the fare prices.”

“Tourists have sometimes issues with rejected card payments, issues with cash payments are less frequent but not receiving change or giving up the bus ride because of lack of payment options causes frustration.”

“Residents using the free-transport card find it hard to keep track of the card usage and to monthly renew the card for extending the benefit of fare exemption.”

Ideation

The very first screen should ask the user what is the main language they want to set up the app to, not only English and Spanish must be included but also German, French and Scandinavian languages will have to be supported.

Having an initial screen that differentiates between a tourist or a resident user for that session. The choice will trigger two different app user journeys.

On the resident app user journey, a map locating the nearest bus stops that the user can select as starting point might be needed. A search bar should also be included to allow the user to search for a particular reference point such as a hotel, a beach, a tourist attraction, etc. Pinpointing on the map will automatically calculate the journey from/to the closest bus stop.

Fare prices must be stated clearly before the purchase and there must be the possibility to complete the electronic payment directly from the app. The completion of the purchase will result in an paperless ticket to scan on the drivers device, so that the destination doesn’t have to be verbally specified to the driver.

The residents card application part will have to state the number of journeys made to date in the current month, displaying a progress bar before the amount of 15 is reached.

For residents card we may think of a similar function to the one we think for tourists for setting the travel arrival bus stop, rather being spoken to the driver.

Prototype

For a matter of brevity I prototyped the tourist user journey simplifying some steps but including the fundamental features designed to respond to the identified solutions such as landmarks/hotels search, multiple electronic payment methods and clear specification of the travel destination on the ticket.

Prototype of payment process for a tourist user

Key learning points

Clear communication is crucial for understanding the tourist needs and for making an individual feel at ease when travelling.

Even in a self-enclosed and relatively small transport network such as the one on the island of Gran Canaria there is still a lot of room for improvement for the integration of a payment system in the current app.

Prototyping the app user journey for residents, which I though was initially easier, might instead be more complex than expected. The navigation functionalities must be retained in case the user in question might not be able to use the travel card, similarly an additional app user journey should be prototyped for the management of the travel card.