Case Study: Improving City Mobility in Lisbon
A wicked problem can be any problem that seems impossible or hard to tackle (How might we solve world hunger?). However, it’s the role of a UX designer to use design thinking techniques to find innovative solutions for challenging problems. In utilizing design thinking techniques, designers are able to follow specific steps to narrow down a problem to solve.
Our group of four was tasked with solving the wicked problem of city mobility in Lisbon, Portugal. “How Might We organize the variety of people navigating the streets to provide a more efficient and cleaner city?”
Our entire process of tackling this wicked problem followed the design thinking process: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
To kick off our process, we began to look into secondary research to get a broader idea of the current issues of city mobility in Lisbon. I experimented with Notion to organize my articles and commentaries. Through secondary research, I found statistics on current traffic flow, popular forms of transportation, and ongoing efforts to improve city mobility.
From this secondary research, our group was able to formulate questions to ask commuters of Lisbon in a user interview. Our group interviewed 5 people in person, and 80% of interviewees traveled by multi-modal means of transportation.
To define our challenging problem of city mobility, we made an affinity diagram of user quotes, pain points, and key moments from the interviews. Based on the user interviews, our group concluded that commuters were passionate about three main issues: scheduling/time, accessibility/safety, and space/cleanliness.
Key Commuter Comments:
Maps look like impressionist art paintings
The metro is too crowded
I’ve seen 2 scooter accidents
I’m sensitive to noises on trains
I wish navigation was clearer
Our group felt that all of these problems stemmed from a root of crowdedness. Crowdedness affects how people navigate the city of Lisbon, as well as the cleanliness and safety of the city. In order to address this issue of crowdedness, we focused our solution on a narrowed down How Might We statement: How might we communicate information to improve traffic flow?
Problem Statement: The commuters of Lisbon need diverse, safe, and reliable forms of transportation because the current public transit system is too crowded limiting commuting options.
Given that our group had a time constraint of a week and a half to develop a solution for this wicked problem, we were only able to interview 5 people. In hindsight, it would’ve been nice to interview a more diverse group of people. I would’ve liked to interview more people who commuted through personal means of transportation.
However, we felt that we had sufficient information from user quotes to continue to draft user personas and user journeys. Our group created three user personas to address each of the main concerns: scheduling/time, accessibility/safety, and space/cleanliness. However, our group mainly focused on scheduling/ time concerns with our final solution.
With all of our compiled information, we began to ideate solutions. Our ideas included both digital and non-digital components. There were many features that we brainstormed, but ultimately we settled on a way finding solution.
We designed the T-Hub, an all-in-one centralized directory. This directory features purchasing tickets, an information point, transportation schedules, navigation directions, points of interests, an option to print maps, and a free customer support line. The T-Hub directory is an interactive touch-screen device with easy to use menus and real-time information. The hub acts as a place for people to book their trips and access information on any form of transportation in the city of Lisbon. Commuters can even download the mobile application, or even print a physical map with all of the information.
Our persona, Valentino, might interact with the T-Hub on his commute to Cascais from downtown Lisbon. He might walk toward the train station, following the way finding on the floor. Inside the station, Valentino might be confused as to where to go, but the way finding on the floor leads him to the T-Hub directory. On the interface, Valentino is able to search the touch-screen interface for Cascais. The directory will show him multiple routes to get to his final destination. He can filter the routes by categories: fastest, shortest, scenic, and easiest. Valentino selects the scenic route to see popular tourist attractions on his ride. He can then transfer the information directly from the directory to his phone or he can print the route ticket and directions. Through the directory he is able to purchase his train ticket through cash, card, or mobile pay. Valentino will conclude his user journey by following a color coded way finding path to his train.
Our group also designed a low-fidelity prototype of the interface on the T-Hub directory:
Our group’s solution of the T-Hub directory creates a better user experience for the commuters of Lisbon, so that they might have better accessibility to all of the necessary information and can buy tickets easily.