Wicked Problems: Case Study 1 — City Mobility

The project worked with Daniel Silvestrini and Mistral Cedanio.

Introduction

For my first project at Ironhack, my team and I decided to pick a theme that spoke about city mobility, and its impact on society. After sharing our backgrounds and getting to know each other as a team, we realized we live in different corners of Puerto Rico, and by sharing experiences using public transportation, we knew this topic was perfect for us to research and create something wonderful.

The Wicked Problem

This project tackles the complex and intricate issues that do not have a simple or definitive solution. As UX designers, our mission is to seek and research multiple perspectives and interests. This project aims to explore and understand these problems better, devise innovative approaches, and seek resolutions that offer the maximum benefit to all parties involved.

For this project, our main goal is to seek problem-solving in the public transportation system. As the relationship between the metropolis and rural areas is transforming, moving around the city has also changed over the last few years. There is now a huge variety of new transportation modes available to people living in big cities. Also, the streets have become a place where people can go for a jog and ride their bikes or exercise. How Might We organize the variety of people navigating the streets to provide a more efficient and cleaner city?

Tools Used

• Slack: To communicate off class and send each other links/documents
• FigJam: To bring our ideas to life
• Figma: For crafting our prototypes and wireframes
• Maze: For evaluating user experience with our prototypes
• Medium: To share with the world our discoveries wrapped up all together

Group Dynamics

Our group had a diverse mix of backgrounds and interests, which enriched our perspective on the project. We broke the ice by sharing our experiences, frustrations, and desires when trying to use public transportation coming from areas that were not remotely close to the metropolitan area, and noticing how limited this public transportation is. We started to add these facts to our CSD Matrix.

Secondary Research

After completing the matrix, we quickly began looking for input from other users all over the island, to get a better grasp on how people feel about the public transportation system available today. This allowed us to get more feedback as well as to prepare what we needed to focus on and improve for our project.

User Survey

With the survey, we were able to collect over 30+ opinions and experiences from real people, aged anywhere from 16 to 50 year olds that utilize public transportation for all sorts of activities such as daily commutes or special events. We aimed our questions to understand which transportation systems are most popular amongst users, what is their experience embracing the positive and the negative aspects, and of course, what suggestions or improvements users think could improve the quality of public transportation.

The survey was made through Google Forms, and the interviews were made through phone calls and recorded with the help of Otter.ai.

User Interviews

While waiting for survey responses, we prepared an interview guide with questions similar to the survey but with open-ended, empathetic questions, avoiding bias or preconceived solutions. These questions allowed us to perceive more in-depth opinions from specific types of users. We each interviewed 2 people who used no public transportation at all due to the same not being available to them, as well as people who commute in public transportation every day, or at least more than 3 days a week. This allowed us as a team to gather information from every single perspective within the time limit we had.

How Might We Statement

After much conducted research, our results made us shift our attention to something more modern that would resolve issues focused on entries with contactless payments, and providing real-time events:

How Might We enhance user comfort and create an app that the user can rely on to get to places faster, cheaper, and smarter?

User Persona

Based on our research, we developed a young adult male who is currently a student and also works part-time, and relies on the train to commute from his house to school and to work every weekday.

Customer Journey Map

To give more perspective to our user persona, a journey map was created in which we presented many scenarios that could happen to any user on their daily commutes, providing a relatable experience for generic users.

Problem Statement

“When public transit users are faced with delays, an inefficient overall transit infrastructure, only one payment option, and a lack of information, they become distrustful about using public transportation systems. This distrust prevents them from using Puerto Rico’s public transit system. They need an efficient way to plan their commutes accurately, to arrive at their destinations safely and on time.”

Mid-Fi Wireframes & Testing

When developing mid-fidelity wireframes, we embraced every sketch made on the low-fi projects. After our Crazy 8 activities, we realized we had many ideas in common, so it was very easy for us to get to work on our project with harmony, making the lo-fi more visually pleasing in Figma.

These are the results below from our Crazy 8 ideas, brought to life in a much more organized way.

Usability Testing

After completing the mid-fid designs, we then started to prototype the app, to make it fully functional and to meet the goals we have previously set ourselves to reach. We made the app as easy to understand as possible, navigating users from their point of origin to their selected destination, as well as recharging their transit card all through the app.

Hi-Fi App

With this feedback, the high-fi was finalized quickly to present to our peers on Presentation day. You can access our finished project on this link.

Lessons Learned

In the realm of city mobility, this project embarked us on a journey of the crucial balance between meeting the needs of commuters of public transportation and enhancing the efficiency of transportation systems we have today in our country. We discovered the importance of agile development and testing, and how it plays such an important role in accomplishing something more concrete and focused on real-life users. This action also accepts the dynamic nature of urban mobility and meticulously documents our strategies. I enjoyed learning and thriving under the time it took to create this project, learning and embracing my knowledge from my mistakes, unlocking our potential as a team and as an individual research designer, contributing to the evolution of public transportation. Moving the city little by little.

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