IRIS: Don’t lose more time on eco transport | by Manuel Cabañero | Feb, 2023

We must value every moment we have in the day. With the growth of cities, public transport has become more and more developed and extended. But with this development comes a lot of problems (delays, strikes, few alternatives, etc). This is why IRIS🌈 arises.

🌈IRIS wants to make transportation less of a concern in our day.

As a student I have suffered a lot of problems with public transport. Also, because of living in a town far from the city center I have few transport alternatives and walking is not an option. For this reason, I decided to address this necessity by Design Thinking and I challenged myself to try to finish within 5 days⏰.

In order to achieve this challenge on time, I needed to organize very well. A Gantt chart can be really useful.

Design Thinking is characterized by being a methodology that promotes deep research. Therefore, I needed to do the best research to defend my idea. To do this, I chose the following techniques:

SWOT (DAFO).

I didn’t know any information about the operation of public transport in Spain, so I decided to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of public transport in this country. I also analyzed internal traits and the threats and opportunities that can be promoted and arised with other countries.

DESK RESEARCH

In order to collect all the information, it is convenient to analyze the information offered by the transport network in Spain, analyzing the EMT transport website and the tweets and transport forums. In addition, I analyzed the competitors to see how the most used app transport works (such as Cabify or Uber).

FOCUS GROUP

Users are the first thing to consider. For this reason, a focus group is a good way to listen to the customers’ opinions. Although it is a complicated methodology to do, it was done as quickly as possible. It was composed of 5 users who were 23 -24 years old.

In order to have a better focus group, it was organized in a semi-structured way: having some questions to direct the focus group towards the information we want to get, but also, allowing users to discuss more points related to the main topic.

QUESTIONNAIRE

A questionnaire was necessary to broaden the opinion of users about public transport. Although it was only open for 3 days, it was answered by 69 users, obtaining verbatims that were closer to the reality they live in (delays, not knowing at which stop they are or the language problem when going to other countries).

NETNOGRAPHY

This technique is complemented by Desk Research. It consists in analyzing the public transport forums in which lots of problems are discussed.

SAFARI

With this technique I wanted to observe the actual problems of the users. The chosen environment has many types of public transport (bus and train). In addition, it is necessary to be really organized in what I am going to observe and the hours of the day in which it will be developed.

I decided to observe only one day for two hours: one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon.

The second day I focused on defining the problem. For this, I did an approach to different user profiles that I develop, with different economic situations and ages (User Person): a student, a worker and an elderly person. After this, I decided to analyze how transport would affect them in their normal day (User Journey). Finally, I wanted to empathize with what they might think and the way they would act with some transportations problems (Empathy map).

For the third day, all that remains is to finish defining the problem. I just summarized the obtained information by extracting the different insights and developing the value proposition and business model, which ensured that the product would be successful if it was launched.

Then, I selected the insights that will be the most important. For this, I chose the In & Out methodology. Another point to consider is to carry out a Benchmarking, which means to analyze the other competitors.

Now, after having collected enough information to have an idea with a solid base and that allows us to defend our idea, I can do a Brainstorming. In this technique, any suggestion is welcome. Afterwards it must be taken into account which is more economical and viable to launch.

I considered that the most economical and viable idea is to make a transport application which is more efficient and effective than the current ones, including simple icons and clear and simple information so any user can understand it. Therefore, with this idea in mind, it is necessary to perform the following techniques:

SITE MAP

The sitemap allows us to organize the different windows of the application. That is, it is a way to preview the structure of the application.

FLOWCHARTS

After defining the structure of the application, I used a flowchart to clarify how the application would work. In other words, the steps that the user must follow from the time they access the application until they get the information they were looking for and leave it.

Finally, before making a high-fidelity design, I made a sketch of how the design would be, the results are the following Wireframes.

Therefore, the high fidelity design of IRIS🌈 is the following one:

As you can see white is the main color of the app. This is because it is a light color that contrasts very well with the blue of the lower menu and the buttons to access the stops.

Blue is the chosen secondary color because it is a color that brings quietness and calm to the user. This matches with the main idea of the application: make transportation more comfortable for users.

About the selected font, Roboto has been chosen for its simplicity and clarity. We maintain at all times the main idea of IRIS🌈: the comfort and calm of our users.

Finally, in terms of functionality, the application offers a set of functions available to the majority of public transport’s applications. What makes this one different from the others is that it offers users the possibility of consulting the location of the desired transport in real time. In this way, they can know in advance that transport is delayed or, on the contrary, it will arrive on time. In addition, it offers the possibility of indicating the stops that remain until the selected destination, without needing to be combined with other applications.

In the future, I would like to apply this application in other provinces and countries with the idea of improving the comfortable movement of users, without the problem of not knowing the language. In addition, I would like to apply Nielsen’s heuristics into the EMT website, to improve it and make it more accessible.

TESTING

To verify that the obtained results were the best, I decided to do a quick test with users of different ages: 22, 46 and 60 years old.

Despite being few opinions to take into account as representatives of the general population, the results were very positive:

• Light colors with good contrast.
• The typography is intelligible and clear.
• The icons are simple and it is easy to understand what they mean.
• When I proposed to them to do specific tasks such as looking for stops or transport combinations, the 22-year-old user were better than the others. However, the other two users were able to complete it with some help, because they don’t use frequently the public transport.