THE BRIEF
City of Sydney & Transport NSW wish to encourage the use of public transport during off-peak times.
CONCEPT OVERVIEW
Highlight the feature of taking 8 paid journeys from Monday - Sunday with an Opal card and enjoy free travel for the rest of the week. Show the comparison of time and money saved by taking public transport over driving into the city during off peak hours.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Existing Opal Card users in Sydney.
Please note: This is a case study addressing a hypothetical brief.
ELEMENTS:
Mobile app, Text message notification and Smart card reader
TOOLS: Axure, Sketch3, Post-its, Pens, Paper and Adobe CC Suite
FIRST SPRINT: 2 weeks, Team project
SECOND SPRINT: 1 week, Individual
THE EXPLORE PHASE
We started off by brainstorming within the team some areas worth investigating. Included in this session was researching transport website and apps to get a better understand of what was already in the market. We formulated some questions about areas we wanted to know more about. With our questions in hand, we took to the streets, to observe and interview people about their public transport habits.
To get an even broader understanding of ridership, we created an online survey. The questions covered: ridership, transport app use, adoption of the Opal card, and general feeling about public transport. The feedback showed following pain points for consumers:
The decision was to focus on current Opal card users and show how increasing their ridership was a financial benefit to them.
Hypothesis
Regular Opal card users would likely qualify for free travel starting Friday mornings, earning them free travel Friday night and all weekend. The reward of free travel would influence their decision to choose public transport. Paying for taxis, private cars and parking in the CBD would be a deterent.
THE DEFINE PHASE
Taking findings from the research and the working hypothesis, we recognised there were 3 main user groups. We created personas for each and then mapped each customer's journey. Then we prioritised the features and functions based on necessity and difficulty to achieve. The outcomes directed to a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to move forward.
The personas
Customer journey
The MVP
The MVP has 3 key features:
THE DESIGN & DELIVER PHASE
The approach to each of the 3 components was to keep the design simple and communication clear. Using quick paper sketches for rapid testing, the designs went through more refinement. Once confident in the results from the sketches, we then moved onto creating a clickable prototype. More usability testing and feedback lead to further refinements of the design.
Video of the prototype
VISUAL DESIGN – Sprint 2
The messaging for both the Smart card reader and text message push notification are kept short for quick reference for users on the go.
For the mobile phone app, while saving comparisons are nice, they are only an approximation based on the details the user inputs. Users testing the prototype commented that knowing when they had "free trips" was most important. As the number of trips and balance is accurate, that feature is prominent on the interface. More usability testing saw additional refinements.
NEXT STEPS
Possible features for development at a later stage are:
