Building a better transport app (SMRTConnect mobile app revamp)
We are coming into the 5th week of the course and we have finished learning all the skills that is needed to become a good UXer… so from this point onwards, its about applying our new knowledge and taking the classroom environment to fully showcase what we have learnt.
Project 3 is also our first group project. We were randomly put into a team of 3 and our first task was brain-storming for an app we would like to revamp.
Defining the problem:
My team consist of Jay & Arisa, both of whom come with working experience. We started chatting and listing down our area of interest and cracking our brain on which segment of interest we should venture into and which app we should pick.
Finally, I offered 2 area of interest that I would like to expore:
Logistics — Singapore Post. As an avid shopper online, I thought that my shopping experiences can be very much improved especially during the delivery service process.
Transport — SMRT. I take the public transport everyday and relay on apps to keep me informed of the timings of arrival for my transport. At the moment, I still have not found a transport app I am fully satisfied with.
Eventually, we decided to pick SMRTConnect, an app launched by SMRT — a local major transport company with services that includes bus, train and cab servcies in Singapore, to revamp.
Coming up with solutions:
Very excited by the choice, we started downloading the SMRTConnect mobile app and apps by other competitors local and foreign, to experience the services provided for ourselves. Currently, I relay on 2 mobile apps, SBS Transit mobile app- another local service provider, and Citymapper for my travel needs.
SMRTConnect received a 2/5 ratings in the app store. We read through the reviews given and noticed that there was a lot of usability problems in the complaints.
For the previous project, I was really impressed with the forward thinking of my classmates in terms of documenting quantitative results. I would like to adopt that for this project to validate our results.
We set out on getting users to test out the current app and share with us their experience and feedback. With that, we were able to get user testing results and conduct user interviews. To capture quantitative results, we produced a user survey asking users of their experience with the app.
From the survey results, 83.3% of our users rated the app 2 and below for being helpful and 100% expressed their dissatisfaction with the app. Looks like we have a lot of room for improvement.
We also evaluated the current app and competitor apps to come up with a list of problems we would like to fix and improvements we would like to adopt ffrom the competitors.
We started the process of understanding more from our user interviews by mapping out the users pain & pleasure points during their daily commute.
From these thoughts, we were able to map out 3 different personas that would use the app.
I am sure you will know a Amanda, a Chris and a Tessa amongst your friends. Because Tessa seems to be the most demanding with her transport information, we decided to focus on her journey.
With the consumer journey map, we could identify areas where Tessa experience the mostly difficult and that gives us a window on opportunity to come in and “save the day”.
These features are some areas we would liuke to focus on, not just for Tessa but it includes some areas that can be improved for Chris and Amanda as well.
A little walk through how we have combined solid user research with beautiful interface design. We think this is great oppotunity to create something that is unique and different.
The Solution:
Link to prototype: https://share.proto.io/KRFF6H/
Final results:
The results we got back from our final user testing was very encouraing. We see a vast improvement as compared to the existing app. Our users also feedback positively about the drastic changes we have made to the existing app.
While doing the last round of user testing on the prototype, we also got a list of usability issues which we looked into and fixed.
Next steps:
- We think this is a really good revamp, we hope to increase the final round of user testings to further improve the app.
- We discovered that a lot of questions asked at the end of the presentation was about notoificiations, which is really important for the users. I would love to have the opportunity to deep dive into notification handling for the app. For example, when users get a traffic notification notice, how will they be taken to re-route their journey? Could we help inform their friends that they are going to be late?
- One of the insights from the very beginning that I noticed is, everyone seems to have a consistent travel pattern everyday. Without even opening the app, can the app reach out to them for example Monday — Friday in the morning at around the same time they would travel to work to ask them “Same travel route?”, that way users don’t even have to worry about the app and waits for the app to reach out to them instead.
- Grab & go! section can be greatly improved too. Currently there are many different stores existing along the train lines, we would need more time to look into how can we better categorise these stores and how relevant these information is to the users.
