Part 1 : UX Research on Mytransport.SG
This is a UX research case study report on a transport mobile application, Mytransport.SG.
Introduction
Product Overview
Mytransport.SG is Singapore’s government supported local navigating app launched in 2010. The app offers useful travelling information and new features to help users get around Singapore.
Key Objectives
The key objective of this research is to understand the product and its users and create design opportunities to further improve the app.
Responsibilities
Conduct research, interviewing and understanding the users, find difficulties/design problems and create key design opportunities.
Timeline: 7 Weeks
Tools: Miro, illustrations by storyset.com
Week 1 : Product Understanding
The first important step to have a successful product research is to have a high-level product knowledge in order to build empathy for the users during interviews. In knowing deeper on the product itself, it helps to make me understand further of its strengths and weaknesses and at a later stage, aids me to acknowledge the user’s pain points.
During this research, I did a competitor analysis on mytransport.SG, Google Maps and Waze, commonly used by the locals in Singapore. To eliminate any biasness towards any product, I went on to both Google Play and Apple App Store to find both positive and negative reviews of the apps chosen. This allows me to have a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and what are their reasoning behind their reviews.
Week 2: Interviewing
I conducted interviews with 3 interviewees whom are all Deaf and frequent users of differen types of navigating apps.
Interviewee 1: Female, 27 years old, Deaf - Delivery Rider (motorbike) at GrabFood.
Interviewee 2: Male, 32 years old, Deaf - Delivery Rider (bicycle) at Food Panda.
Interviewee 3: Male, 27 years old, Deaf - Delivery Rider (motorcycle) at GrabFood.
Before the start of the interview, I pre-amped the interviewees that there will be no right or wrong answers given so that they will feel comfortable and give their very honest thoughts on the product. I then proceeded on in asking some of the interview questions below.
Do you plan your route before going out?
What is your favorite app to navigate around?
What is the best feature in your favorite app that has helped you a lot when navigating?
Do you wish the navigating app have other features that could help you?
I then outlined a simple task which is,
“You are going to send an order from Westmall to Found8 office. Use mytransport.SG app to navigate your way to the destination”
I continue my observation while they meddle around the app. The results were fascinating and I sure did found good insights from their trial. This process allows me to understand their struggles and identify many pain points from both user and someone who is hard of hearing.
Week 3: Affinity Diagram
Affinity Diagram has help me to unify large amount of data by finding relations between the concepts or ideas, gathered from the interview sessions. Creating an affinity diagram has allowed me to understand complex issues or problems about the product and find a pattern out of it.
To have a good amount of data and identify patterns, we have to at least have 5 interviewees. I then combined my data with two other students form this course (total 7 interviewees), and sort them into statistics, observation and quotes.
We then discuss and focused on the feedback, both negative and positive experience they had with mytransport.sg and other navigating apps. There were good insights from the patterns formed that can be taken as design opportunities. Creating an affinity diagram allows me to have a clearer understanding from the users perspectives and has aid me to create the persona in the next research.
Week 4: Personas
Creating a persona in this user research is a vital step in producing useful usable product and services. To me, it is a great method for rapidly identifying user needs and gain confidence before designing a product - supported by real-world data and that the data represents the wider target audience.
The persona was created through the following steps below;
Perform high-quality interviews and collect as much knowledge as possible about my target audience (week 2).
Identify patters and group users into personas (week 3).
Define user persona - Personal and professional background, personality, bio, goals, specific needs and their frustrations (week 4).
A summary of the persona;
Sam is a 30 year old delivery rider @ GrabFood. He lives in the western side of Singapore, Bukit-Batok along with his family members. Sam is friendly and outspoken and can be slightly anxious and easily annoyed when under pressure. Sam enjoys and is passionate in what he’s doing. He always try to ensure that his customers receives the best experience when ordering food with Grab. By doing so, this allows him to receive 5 star reviewing, in return allowing him to get more delivery jobs. Sam is also a motorcycle enthusiast and would usually ride out on weekends to meet his friends.
Frustrations: Dislike high traffic, inconsistencies using Google Maps via GrabFood app (widget) and dislike rash road drivers/riders.
Goals: To reach his destination with no major obstacles safely, and on time.
Week 5: Customer Journey Map
In this process, I created a customer journey map based on the persona I built, showing his behavior and emotions while performing his tasks in reaching his goals. I then evaluate his struggles and pain points and create potential design opportunities out of it.
From my evaluation, below are some of the design opportunities that could help improve mytransport.SG app and create a better experience for their customers;
Cleaner and better search engine. Currently it is messy with appearance of unrelated addresses.
Improve ‘Start Button’ on the app. Button not visible enough for drivers. Icon does not represent well.
Provide more than 1 route options highlighted on the map.
Include ‘journey for motorbike’ option.
Provide accurate road traffic data. To be highlighted on the map on which part of the journey are in high traffic.
Nice to have function- ERP and speed cameras.
Allow users to change route easily without scrolling and reading through as it is dangerous.
Provide ‘nearest exit’ option.
My Reflections
UX Research is a process we should not skip - User research provides an essential foundation for design strategy and provides data to back the design strategies and its decisions.
Data is gold - With UX Research and making empathy as its core, I was able to uncover valuable hidden insights which could otherwise be overlooked and therefor able to create design opportunities.
The good in doing UX Research is to be able to create designs that are truly relevant to my users, that are easy and pleasurable to use and being able to understand the return of investment of my UX design in the future.
In conclusion, with UX research, I’ll be able to validate the assumptions I’ve made about my audience and avoid costly missteps should I be wrong.
Thank you for reading!
