be your passenger's best train companion.
Austrail Train Ticket App
Personal Project
UX Bootcamp
Talent Garden Innovation School
Become part of a passenger's great travel experience by providing a train app that has an easy and functional purchase process.
Context
A B2C concept of providing a site where train passengers, both regular and irregular, can purchase train tickets easily and create a tool that is helpful and beneficial for them as part of their travel experience.
Target group:
Regular and irregular commuters - workers, employees and pupils as well as tourists from Generation Y and older
Process Highlights
Role: Designer, Strategy
Research, Interaction, Visual Design & Testing
July 2021 (2 Weeks)
Before I started my investigation and research, I had some assumptions about the target group:
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The young generation (Gen Y&Z) find it easy to buy tickets online and prefers to book so
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The older generation prefers buying at kiosk or at the info station or ticket machine (if online: they rely on the younger family members)
HYpotheses
During my UX Bootcamp at Talent Garden Innovation School, I got the opportunity to work on a personal project and I chose to create an app that has a connection with my current job. I've been working as train stewardess since October 2018 and am still working in this industry as I write this but probably by the time you read this, I might not be working there anymore, since I am quiting my job tomorrow (after writing this) to pursue my dream as UX Designer.
I made this project to try to solve the problems of my passengers. With this project I aimed to understand and gain knowledge in UX Strategy with the help of mentors from the Talent Garden Innovation School.
BACKGround
SO what's the problem? Gathering insights
As a train stewardess, I have encountered and heard a lot of complaints from the passengers:
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The number one problem they always share with is how complicated the train apps are for them.
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Secondly, they never know the availability of food and drinks that is offered in the menu, which at the same time time consuming for the stewards, because they have to go back to the snack machine or displays to check if they are there or sometimes other stewards get the food without being able to tell the other steward that they already sold the item.
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Another problem I had to deal with a lot are the passengers who oversleep and miss their stop.
MORE INSIGHTS THROUGH MARKET AND COMPETITION ANALYSIS as well as best practices
In Austria, ÖBB and Westbahn are known to be the two biggest competitors on the austrian railways in providing passenger rail service.
That is why my next step was to look for feedback about their apps through reviews and ratings of the competitors in Apple Store and Google Play. So here are some of the things that I stumbled upon:
OTHER PAIN POINTS
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don't like the idea of the mobile version of the website as an app
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always a problem of apparent misunderstanding or lacking information – hassle for both stewards and passengers
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No E-Wallet Integration for ÖBB
Customer Journey MAp
Legend:
Blue: Touchpoints of each action
Yellow: Thoughts and feelings of the customer
Green: Opportunities
Pink: Painpoints
This is customer journey map was created based on my observation of my passengers whenever they ask for my help to buy tickets online.
One of the first reviews of the findings
USER Research
Who are the users? What type of users are there? What is the difference between asking the users as an employee of the company and as a private person? How biased are the opinions of the users when being asked so? These are the questions I reflected on after doing the market research and competition analysis. So I took the courage to conduct a field study.
Type of Study: Field study through interview and observation
Participants: 10
Ages: 15-70
Interview Time: at least 5 mins for each person
Questions asked:
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Age
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Travel frequency with train
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Purpose of traveling
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Reason of train choice
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(Preferred booking method)
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Level of difficulty of their booking method and rating from 1-5 (5 being the highest)
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Feedback on the ideas that will be added as special features
Result: Most of the assumptions were correct. The Gen Zs and Millenials I interviewed found no difficulty in booking their tickets through the apps, however the older generation said that they have no patience with buying their tickets online and prefer to have a means of purchase through a teller or a ticket machine where there is more a face-to-face or physical interaction. Some of the interviewees want to have more payment options and others would like to see on which platform the train is departing from and arriving to. Another thing that I noticed is that as a private person, there IS really a difference when the passengers are being asked as a private person and as a steward. When asked in uniform most of the passengers more likely to give complaints and suggestions and share their frustrations with these apps in comparison to being approached in civilian clothing.
Takeaways: After doing a number of reviews and revision of all the data collected, in the end I understood that there was no problem in terms of the functionality of the apps. However there is still something to fix and that is to improve the structure of these apps to have an easier and more straightforward ticket purchase.
Providing solutions
After getting to know the users and their problems with these train ticket apps, I created user personas and I used the whiteboard again to define what users actually need and then added some extra features to solve the other side problems.
FOcus
The goal is to try to keep the structure of the purchase process clear and simple, not only for tickets but also for the upgrades. I also wanted to make the app familiar for the passengers, giving them the possibility to buy ticket as a guest or as a regular member and also make it easy for them to find the status of their travel through the train status section and retrieve their bookings upon checking. Furthermore, aiming to increase the efficiency of the passengers and to lessen food waste, I added an extra feature called E-Catering, which is a online ordering system in the app, that is only available for First Class passengers.
USER Personas
MVPs and extra features
Most of the MVPs were taken and inspired by the most apps that are frequently used by commuters/travelers to get familiar with the conventional ticket/travel app features in Austria.
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Homepage: Route
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Tickets
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Cart
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Account Registration/Log-In
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About Us
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Customer Support
Sitemap
Then I drew the sitemap to see and understand the user journey, which led me to at least five different user flows.
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Train and Passenger Status
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Alarm/Notification Bell
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E-Catering through QR Code Menu Stickers (only in First Class)
BEnefits
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Contribution to the great travel experience of the passengers. (Beginning, during and after the travel)
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Tracking to encourage punctuality.
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Easy purchase process
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Stable loyalty level from existing regular users and a good first impression for first-time visitors.
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Less times of missing the stop for sleeping passengers.
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Increase in Productivity for Stewards and better quality of personal service
Prototype:Sketches & Wireframes
I also looked for best practices and for the conventional structures, especially the recommended apps by passengers, before starting with the sketches and prototyping.
Lo-fi & HI-Fi wireframes on Figma
I user tested these lo-fi wireframe with 3 people remotely to check the structure of the app and also to observe the behavior of the user towards the icons and layout used in this app, here are some of their feedback:
“ The structure is straightforward and it’s catchy”
“I wish the font sizes were a bit bigger” – Phone Version Trial: “Ok actually it’s readable, maybe have an icon where the oldies can resize their font size.”
“I like the loading pages and the alarm feature because sometimes I want to sleep but am scared that I might miss my stop.”
After receiving feedback on the structure, I moved onto the UI Design of this app. I decided to use a fictional company for the purpose of proposing this project/idea flexibly without being attached to any real company, so I created an imaginary company and designed its brand.
FUNCTIONALITY OVER VISUAL
AS DESIGN PRINCIPLE
To make sure to keep the steps as clear and straightforward as possible.
A glimpse of the prototype I presented on the presentation day during the UX Bootcamp. Click on to try it!
UI Design
Learnings:
1. User Research especially interviews and field study must be planned THOROUGHLY and WELL. I learned to really think through what data I need from the users. But due to lack of time, I was not able to ask more users. However, asking the stewards about the extra features were interesting and they found the ideas great and helpful if implemented.
2. Know your WHY in this project and focus on it. Avoid getting distracted by ideas that are not needed by the user.
3. The importance of Usability Testing: the number of Usability Testing done for this project was not enough. I could've made it more user-centered if I had more people from the older target goup test the product.
4. I learned that UI still matters as much as the UX of the product. It was easy for me to build structure and plan out the next steps but designing this product visually was harder than I thought. There were a lot of things to consider, even the smallest details like spacing and sizes of the elements.
5. One more thing about UI: Do not overdo it, especially when UI is overwhelming the functionality of the product.
6. The goal of this project is to learn more about UX Strategy and I gained a lot of understanding in this area. I will keep on pursuing this to mastery.
