Ironhack’s Prework: DESIGN THINKING

Challenge 1

Recently I embraced a new challenge and this is my first step to dive into the UX Design world, the job of the UX designer is to find the sweet spot where User Needs and Business Goals overlap; DESIGN THINKING is the tool that we are going to use to achieve this.

The design thinking process has five steps that we need to follow to create innovative and valuable products or ideas.

The task

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

The Client

UrbanGo is a public transit and mapping startup. Their goal is to solve the problems of urban mobility by offering the quickest and cheapest public and private transport routes to their users.

Urbango optimizes the movement of public transport users in cities, managing user departure times to make local mobility more efficient.

1.EMPATHIZE

The goal is to understand who you’re designing for, by talking to potential users using interview techniques, to achieve this I prepared a list of questions and molested a couple of friends to find out what are the main pain-points the users have.

The questions are focused on finding what are the mobility habits of the users to discover where are the main pain-points in their journeys.

2. DEFINE

Understand the different mobility options is the main challenge that users face when they are in an unfamiliar city with complex transportation systems, getting tickets with the confidence that it is the right and cheapest option is the goal that everyone wants to achieve.

Frustration comes when they face a language barrier and have to deal with complex and broken ticket machines.

Trust that our mobile application will offer the best and cheapest alternative to purchasing those tickets will be our goal.

3. IDEATE

Finding a solution

In brainstorming, there are not bad ideas, but one has to be the king and in this case, the most accurate is to digitalize the transportations tickets. Provide the user the possibility to buy them at any time, in one place, organized, and with zero-waste.

QR codes are the technology that we are going to use and partnerships with the public and private transportation systems are a must.

4. PROTOTYPE

With just a couple of clicks, our users have the best route for their journey and the possibility to buy the right ticket (s) and have them all in one place.

A few things that I learn…

Sometimes I want to rush into the solutions when I have a problem and fix it right away but this process teaches me that I need to start with the basics and slow down because the most important part is to empathize and understand what are the real needs of the user.

A happy and content user has to be the goal of every product.