Buy a Ticket Online — GvB Optimization Project
Introduction:
The GvB Travel App is the official app from the GVB — Amsterdam’s primary public transport operator. The App enables users to make sense of the city’s tram bus, tram and metro lines and to buy time dependent tickets to enable them to arrive at their destination.
The Fast and Furious team’s usability designers conducted asynchronous and informal usability tests on a lo-fi prototype of the GvB App remotely through a computer. The test was to validate the ideas generated by a period of ideation and gathering paint points from users. Due to time constraints team members had no supporting elements such as a test administrator or data loggers present in the room. The sessions captured each participant’s navigational choices, comments, overall satisfaction ratings of both prototype and live versions of the app as well as questions and feedback.
Executive Summary:
In general all participants found the GvB app to be illogical when it came to the ticket buying process. Another unifying factor was that all of our users were new to the GvB app with many using NS where necessary and Google Maps as their preferred route planner.
The test identified a few issues with the prototype including:
- A preference for carrier logos rather than vehicle icons
- Some route confusion with the Map Lines
- An excess of pages of ‘details’
- A more direct Buy — Pay user flow. (The ‘buy’ button should lead directly to payment rather than more details)
This document contains the participant feedback, satisfaction ratings and recommendation for improvements.
Methodology:
The team contacted and recruited participants through their local network. Each individual session lasted approximately 45 minutes. During the session the test administrator explained the test sessions and asked the participant to answer brief contextual background questions. Participants read the task scenarios and tried to complete the tasks on the prototype.
Here are the primary pain points that the prototype was built to address:
In order to resolve these pain points we designed a Lo-Fi prototype to improve the ticket buying user flow using the GvB app as a base. The intention of the prototype was to:
- Provide easier route planning
- See if it is easy to find information about different carriers on the Travel advice & Ticket section.
- Improve clarity through new UI design.
- Validate the idea of providing tickets for a whole journey including multiple carriers (NS and GvB etc,)
Feedback
User feedback was gathered in the form of both quantitative data regarding user satisfaction with the prototype and original GvB app. Qualitative user feedback gathered throughout the test with a ‘think’ out loud approach owing to the asynchronous testing structure.
Satisfaction Questionnaire Ratings (averaged):
How likely are you to use GvB? 4/10
How easy is ticket buying within the GvB App? 5/10
Positive Findings
- Users liked the ability to see and select different tickets for different carriers and portions of the journey -
“I like the level of details for each carrier and the fact that you can select to buy a ticket for a portion of your journey”
- Users liked having a Map page as it helps them with spatial awareness and route planning
“I like having access to a Map to see which direction I’m going in, I can easily judge if the public transportation route appears to take ‘the long way’ to my destination.”
- Users liked seeing a clear cost of tickets and greater understanding of the relationship between tickets and rides. E.g: Cost of Tickets was clear on the first page.
Usability Issues
- “I think it would be more convenient if the first buy button could allow me to pay for all the journey at once and the details below could allow me to buy the separate carrier tickets”
- “I prefer to see this page if I were looking for more details rather than being part of the process.” — (Page 2)
- “I can see more details of different carriers, it seems excessive, I’m seeing this information a couple of times. I expected the buy button to send me directly to the payment because it is more convenient to pay for the different carriers at once.”
- “One Single Route line would be easier to understand”
- “It would be nice to add a total if there is more than one trip included”
Recommendations for Improvement
- Multiple users suggested having NS / GvB Logos rather than the Vehicle Icons. However, the fact that these users may have been all Amsterdam natives would play a role so further ideation required.
- Reduce total number of pages by having some of the data behind a ‘more details’ page.
- ‘Buy’ button should either go directly to payment or be replaced with a ‘more details’ button. There was confusion over why the buy button wouldn’t lead straight to payment.
- Total Price should be visible on Page 2 (and throughout, status of system updates).