Rethink Citymapper : a parisian worker’s perspective
In March 2019, the very well known Citymapper launched the Citymapper pass, a contactless technology (a physical card or a feature in-app via NFC) that combines different tickets in one system for transportation in London : you can not only pay at once for all the city’s public transportation, but you can also rent, book, pay for private systems like Lime, Cityscoot, etc.
To me, it is a very London-like way of thinking transportation. It works well for users used to a system in which the pass is wallet-like — there is an amount of money on it, you spend it ride by ride. But in Paris, we either have :
- a pass : monthly or yearly fixed price for a specific area, leaves a large room for improvisation
- tickets : 1.90 € regardless of the distance. 01:30 max to go from A to B, which gives you plenty of time to go from one side of the city to the other for a very cheap price
Some complications can happen while using connexions — subway+bus, subway+regional trains, subway+tram — or the regional train system, if you don’t have a pass or if your destination is outside your subscription area. But to me, the wallet-pass system is a very stressful and unfair situation, as it does not allow you to budget transportation in advance as easily as the fixed-price pass. It does interest me, however, to easily pay the left-to-charge tickets that don’t fit in my already paid subscription.
I also think about people whose smartphone hasn’t NFC tech or want to avoid paying with it, as these people still exist in 2020 : is a Citymapper pass an adequate solution to them ? And in general, is using both public transportation and private Uber or Cityscoot-like systems on one ride such a common situation that it makes the Citymapper pass a competitive option ? Is having all transportation payments in one place a crucial feature or a nice bonus ?
The challenge
I am not asking this out of the blue. For a bootcamp assignment, I was asked to design a feature that takes some of the pain out of paying for transportation with Citymapper. I looked for what was already there — the Citymapper pass — and the variety of the audience for such an issue : between daily local users on known rides to tourists here for one week wondering how the system even works, the needs and constraints could vary heavily.
However, the very short deadline I had in a lockdown situation led me to limit my investigation. I asked only three users, whose habits are very like mine, what would they see as an improvement to use transportation with Citymapper. So here we are, trying to go from parisian student’s point of view to a broader range of interests in Citymapper pricing.
The precise assignment is : “Your task is to create a feature for this app that solves the pain of having to purchase different public transport tickets by different channels”. However, as often in ethnography, the interviewees broke this framework : the main pain point about price of transportation in Paris is not buying different tickets by different channels (we have one channel for all the tickets). It is having to figure out that they need to buy different tickets.
The user (in his comfort zone)
With a different deadline, I would have started to ask very general questions about transportation, such as “how do you go from your home to your workplace”, “which transportation is your favorite”, etc. Were we not in a lockdown, I would have come along with the users from a point A to point B and observed them. But I had a lot of time constraints, so I broke the design thinking framework a bit.
- My target audience is Parisian workers or students who use public transportation daily, and occasionally go in foreign cities. They have a usual ride, but also need to map an unusual one from time to time. As they don’t have cars, they are very reliant on transportation.
- They already use Citymapper frequently, and as they are reliant on transportation, they can be very reliant on Citymapper too.
- I have time constraints to interview them and I am on the phone (30mn max) : so I directly engaged the conversation about transportation and Citymapper as one unique issue, even if it means that the results are very specific to this assignment, biased, and won’t be usable business-wise yet. As always in ethnography, you don’t ignore your limits : you use them.
I took the opportunity to practice sketching and it didn’t go as polished as I wanted, but here it is.
You may not want to expand all of the sketching, so here it is :
All three users were students in Paris, two of them having the habit of using Citymapper in foreign european cities. They all had a student pass that allows them to freely use any kind of train, tram and bus transportation in Paris area. The first questions were :
- Do you use Citymapper ?
Yes, but they didn’t think about the desktop version
- How often do you use it ?
It depends, but on a daily basis to check traffic, and on occasions to map a new journey.
They all spontaneously explained what purpose they had to use it.
- Did you use it in foreign cities ?
One no (Arthur), two yes
One specifically said “yes, it’s practical even if you have to check where you pay the ticket” (Diana)
- How do you use it ? Can you show me ?
They opened the app and told me what they do.
And an important thing they do is : not using the “Go” button (even on unusual rides for Diana, so does Laura’s boyfriend who couldn’t help being interested by the subject as I interviewed her).
They all use their prior knowledge of the system to interpret the results of the app calculations. For example, Laura said that in Amsterdam, she prioritizes bike and walk as the pricing of tramway and subway is based on the distance you ride — the app does not show the price of the ride for Amsterdam yet.
The user (out of his comfort zone)
As they were not at all asking themselves “what is the price” or “do my pass include this ride”, I put them in the following situation : they had to imagine they owned a 1–3 zones standard pass in Paris, and had to look for their prefered ride to go from Gambetta (Paris subway station) to the city hall of Sucy-en-Brie (so far in the area, zone 5, that it is almost the beginning countryside).
The ride werecalled “atrocious” (or “wow”) by the users, and they quickly chose a ride with less connexions (metro + RER + bus) as the timing is very similar from one ride to another. As they mostly stayed silent after that, I asked them to imagine that they were going right now — I often had to say “Ok, so you are in the metro ; what, now ?”.
They asked :
- About the bus in Sucy-en-Brie :
“What is this bus ticket ? Is it a standard ticket ?” (Arthur)
“I know it is a standard ticket but I realize the app does not say it” (Diana)
- About the price :
“What can I pay with my ride ?” (Arthur & Laura ; Diana knows the area)
“Maybe if I use the pass for the first part and then pay for the RER and bus from Nation I pay less…” (Arthur & Laura)
Me : What if you go out of the RER on the limit of your pass, and then buy a ticket for the two zones left ? It’s cheaper. Response : “Hm no it’s a lot of time lost”
- About the ticket in itself :
Nothing. They did not wonder where to buy it. But I asked. Where do you get it ?
“Hm, I guess I can buy it in the RER station, but if it’s crowded I pay the bus driver event if it’s 0.30€ more” (Laura)
“Wow, I don’t know… The bus driver I guess” (Arthur)
They also had requests :
- “I want to pay online for a ticket when I’m lost” (Diana)
- “I could have a map with the counters” (Diana)(she added : “and if I could avoid having info about bikes on the map… I don’t care, I don’t use them…”)
- “My dream ticket is on my phone : I pay it, I enter the metro, I use it, et voilà” (Arthur)
- “I could pay with the phone and have the ticket on my Wallet app” (Diana)
- “I could pay with a Citymapper account” (Laura)
- “The lack of info about zones on the map confuses me” (Laura)
- “It would be nice to have a price that takes your pass into account” (all of them)
I also asked if they were comfortable paying with credit card info on their phones. Arthur was not and prefered to use Apple or Google pay ; Diana was comfortable to use credit card info on Citymapper (and Laura was proof-testing the interview guide so I did not ask her). With more time, I would have made them also take a ride in London or an unknown bus system in Japan, but I had to stop.
The problem
1.The main issue
There is one main problem : lack of information and therefore, precision, about pricing for unusual rides. Which ticket do I need to buy ? Do I already have it ? How much is it minus the pass I already have ?
The second problem is that this issue doesn’t present itself to them in the interview if they are not guided through a tricky but common situation — in real life, that means that they don’t ask themselves the details of the pricing info and logistics until they are right in front of the issue and get lost. “How many times users got fined while going to big events in the suburbs because they didn’t know they had to get another, more expensive ticket ?”, rhetorically said Laura.
The third problem is where to pay for the tickets, but these three users quickly guessed where they could expect to get them. In this regard, paying on the app is a nice bonus but not the priority.
2.How to solve it
The lack of information translates into these questions :
- 1. What is the price of each ticket ? → Display info (detail)
- 2. What are those tickets ? → Display info (detail) ; warnings during travel (notification “Validate this ticket”)
- 2. Where do I buy them ? → Buy directly or (Display info) map the counters
- 2. Is my pass enough to pay for this ride (London version : Is my balance enough ?) → Warnings ; personalize info ; map the pricing
But the questions I labelled with the number “2” are not coming up directly if the question “1” is not asked by the users and answered by the app.
Solution A : a direct payment feature gets rid of the “2” questions. But it is not a transparent design and it leads to questions about the pricing details. A fee could be added to the price depending on cities.
Solution B : a “where are the counters [around you ; on a map ; on your way…]” feature avoids the mistakes the app could make when announcing pricing and leaves a great autonomy to the user. It could be designed in a way that does not break the very interactive and straight-lined user flow of the app, but it is challenging. Furthermore, it is indeed great but useless information without having the pricing details prior to that.
Solution C : personalized pricing info display. It shouldn’t add too many screens, even none ; it is a necessary step to introduce the other features ; it is doable in my deadline ; but it could bring up unanswered questions (“Where ?”) and requests (“I want to pay now”) that lead to frustration in use.
Deadline-wise, and for ethical reasons, solution C has my preference. It would have to be tested, of course, as my preference is not necessarily the response users looked for.
Handmade prototype
The main information to know about constraints to design the solution C is that the users do not use the “Go” button, they stop right before : whatever I want to implement to enhance their experience has to happen before the intervention of the “Go” button. So we start from the screens I showed you, and several solutions exists.
The chosen option 3 (un labelled on this doc !) is on the right side.
A simple tag addition to the pre-existing design was too confusing (option 1 in green). Designing an overlay by clicking on the price (option 2) breaks the user flow and is not a Citymapper practice ; it also means redesigning the price tag to hint its interactivity, but it does not fit the container.
The chosen option adds a “ticket info” button (temporary name) that leads to a screen that also have the classic Go button if needed : no need to go back to proceed to the detailed travel info.
This screen displays the ride on the left, its price & ticket on the right, with the personalized info. You can remove your pass info or change it with the rollup on the bottom, so you can budget the ride for someone else or for you if, for whatever reason, you don’t have your pass with you.
On the very bottom of the screen, there is room for the “pay” feature that already exists in London and is probably meant to be set up in other cities.
Moving forward, the goal would be to clarify the information without leading to stressful and useless questions, and keep the userflow as linear as possible to fit with the very practical feel of the original app design. But before moving forward, I would extend the research to other type of users before launching anything sophisticated ;)
