This case study will show the user-centred design approach to a prompted wicked problem — a first attempt to organize requirements, actors, and resources with technology to improve peoples experience. The result will be a possible solution on a mobile application.
Project contributors: Maria Gimeno and Nastya Hearty
Challenge
A wide variety of alternatives is emerging in the transportation field. At the same time, the streets have become a playground for exercise.
How Might We organize the variety of people navigating the streets to provide a more efficient and cleaner city?
Deliverables
Research & Data Analysis
- Lean Canvas
- Survey & Interview
- Evaluate Survey & Interviews
- Affinity Map
Empathize
- Empathy Map
- User Persona & User Journey
- How Might We
- Problem Statement
- Hypothesis Statement
Ideation & Design
- Sketches & Concept
- Lo-Fi Wireframes
- Final Thoughts & Next Steps
Research & Data Analysis
As a first approach to city mobility and the associated question, we’ve used the method of the lean survey canvas. We asked ourselves who our users are, what concerns them and which questions might be relevant for our survey.
Through our survey, we were able to capture 100 responses and generate such quantitative data.
Building on the questions in the survey and with the results in mind, we have created more specific, more in-depth questions for interviews.
An insight:
Why do you use your preferred transport option instead of a greener alternative?
What would motivate you to use a greener alternative? (And why?)
What do you like the most from your preferred transport option? (And why?)
Taking the qualitative data from the five interviews respondents and the quantitive data from the survey’s, we constructed an affinity map.
We are using Dot-Voting to clarify the pain/primary points to work on. See them on the left side.
Empathize
The user’s responses from surveys and interviews were the foundation for building an empathy map. Therefore, we put ourselves in the perspective of our potential users to gain a better understanding and work on a targeted solution.
Afterwards, we used the collected information to create our primary user persona. Christina Commuter combines motivations, frustrations, wants & needs from the previous research steps and is now a representative of our target group.
In our user journey, we show Christina during a typical day while she uses public transport. By visualizing and making the associated emotions clear, we recognize her needs and find our approach to change.
Some how-might-we questions have given us approaches for the following ideation process.
- How might we provide greener and faster option for eco-concious and time-conscious people?
- How might we help people avoid crowds?
- How might we create more green alternatives?
- How might we provide better access to greener alternatives?
- How might we solve her problem of wanting to get to work on time with a greener alternative and ideally avoid crowds?
The formulation of a Problem Statement also allowed us to take our user’s perspective even more clearly and focus on solving the problem. With the Hypothesis Statement, we have made a prognosis. This assumption enables us to test the result later.
Ideation & Sketches
To focus ourselves on the goals of the mobile application, we’ve combined facts and thoughts in a mindmap.
Concept // Green-Point App
We designed the App to make you feel better when moving around the city, helping you avoid crowds and save time. The App shows the usual transport options for a route of your choice. Additionally, you will get environmentally friendly alternatives, for example, a rental bike or an e-scooter.
If the user chooses a greener alternative, he\she will earn, as a reward, green points. After collecting x-amount of these green points, one can exchange these for coffee, a free bike ride or something similar.
Lo-fidelity prototype
We took our concept, ideas and sketches and proceeded into a clickable Lo-fi prototype. We wanted to establish the flow of Christina, our user persona, on her way to reach a destination of her choice .
You can follow the steps she is doing to select her destination, the different options she has been offered, and automatically her personal choice to get there. In this case, Christina uses a greener alternative, a rental bike which earns her five green points.
We finished this project after creating the Lo-fidelity prototype. Also, usability tests and the further development of the idea employing additional prototypes are still in progress.
Next steps
We focused on research to collect data, turn that raw data into information, and gain insights. We adjusted to thinking differently and took an idea a little further by designing the journey at every step.
We realized that we still have a long way to go before we can achieve a fully realized product through this process. More data needs to be collected, and more testing needs to be done to refine our solution and help our users.
Final thoughts
This app also offers the possibility of showing users a new way of designing their routines. It can help break old unhealthy and polluting ways of getting around the city. By choosing a bicycle or an e-bike, for example, the user has the opportunity to get to know their own city and surroundings more consciously and to behave sustainably in the process. In addition, in times of contagious diseases, large gatherings of people and thus infection can be avoided.
Created under the supervision and in collaboration by Ironhack Remote.
Project 1 // Wicked Problems
