UX Design — Fundamentals of UX (part 2)
User Research
User research was a challenge as we did not have access to real data or customers of Bus Eireann — however there is always information available.
- Desktop research to gain a deeper understanding of the service and target audience — multiple sources available (Citizens Information, Department of Education, and Bus Eireann).
- Light Touch Research speaking with friends, family and colleagues who have primary and secondary age children to informally understand what their transport requirements and challenges were with a survey.
- Survey To understand key motivators, needs, concerns and digital preferences which might influence behaviours.
- Brainstorm to challenge our perceptions and thinking regarding the needs, challenges and behaviours and to put ourselves in the mind of the user.
Survey of Users
We did a survey to understand key motivators, needs, concerns and digital preferences which might influence behaviours. Here a few key highlight from the survey:
- How do you your children currently travel to school?
Only 25% of our testers use the bus as a way to get to school. This could indicate a lot of factors for this that we need to investigate further.
4. How far do you live from school?
Almost half of our testing group lives close to the school which will not be eligible for school transport according to Bus Eireann. This may skew the results a bit
5. Does your school provide transport options or do you arrange yourself?
It’s interesting to see how no school seems to provide school transport for any of our testers. This could indicate a lack of incentive from the Bus Eireann or from the schools themselves.
Other Findings
- The best source of information is via other parents / word of mouth, then facebook parents groups — they then look to local transport providers or the school
- Some issues had been reported in media making them possibly not even want to apply.
- Safety, Cost, Reliability, and accessibility (particularly in rural areas) which is a concern for few users.
“Accessibility on country roads, we have very little access to Bus Routes. Regular timetable.” — James
“Getting child there safely and on time” — Janet
Here are the full set of the SurveyMonkey Results.
Personas
Building on our research three personas were created to review different approach’s and to look at different users goals, motivation, frustrations, and skills we might need to consider. Sinead, Micheal & Morgan.
We choose to look into Sinead as a persona as it best fit what a typical user of Bus Eireann would look like, now we can drill down deeper into understanding her needs.
Empathy Map
We then built this into an empathy map to visualize the user attitudes and behaviours to align on a deep understanding of our end users.
Key Finding
- Difficult process to register for a busy individual and unclear
- Limited options available for when it comes to choices of transport if not eligible.
- Poor communication from Bus Eireann, sometimes taking week(s) in a form of a posted letter.
Customer Journey
Scenario: Sinead needs to arrange transport for her daughter Amy to attend school in September. She wants an option that provides good accessibility on country rounds, and she is concerned that there are very little bus routes available
Expectations:
- Clear online information
- Ability to book online through mobile
- Feedback / helpful process
Opportunities:
- Provide clearer upfront information — especially FAQs — remove noise
- Clarify eligibility (via quiz) before starting
- Simplify Application forms — streamline stems
- Confirm status
Competitor Analysis
Nidirect
UK government based school transport, has a quick questioner before signing up to see if you are eligible to sign up, with clear information before you start to register.
Opportunities:
- Allows user to answer a quick set of question to find out their eligibility before beginning the signing up/registering. Each question (total of 4) answer basic FAQ questions a user may have .
Lynk
Irish company allows users to see what are the available routes and book a taxi for your journey as long as its along the way.
Opportunities:
- Lets you see what routes the taxis are taking, can be helpful to identify how many people on that route and what the minimum for that route to be operational.
