Persona 2: Johannes Östberg

Persona: Johannes Östberg

Background

Johannes is 35 years old and lives next to T-Centralen and has an education in IT-Technology. Johannes has a background in engineering and enjoys cooking food. He is currently single although is looking for a woman that can complete him and his odd habits of cooking.

During his studies he found that he had alot of free time and occasionally looked for other hobbies. This is how his cooking skills came to be.

Personality

Johannes is a very adventurous person that enjoys sandwiches, food and smiling. He likes to explore untested territory of Stockholm and does not doubt going out strolling through local parks. Johannes is nevertheless a strict person and prefers to plan his day the night before to avoid unexpected surprises like bad sandwiches. He feels that, regardless of planning the night before, he still can get stressed and sometimes make bad sandwiches which surprises him unexpectedly.

Today

Today Johannes wants to purchase a Surface Pro to ease his workload by always having access to his documents. Since he enjoys his work he would like to save some money. He is currently working as an IT-Consultant which he enjoys doing, along with his cooking fetish. Occasionally he will receive sporadic requests of assisting a young student with their Mathematics course. This in conjunction with his sporadic cooking contributes to his irregular timetable.

Goals

• Travel cheap
• Save money for a Surface Pro

Persona 1: Hanna Göransson

Persona: Hanna Göransson

Background

Hanna works as a sales person in Kista and commutes to her job by car. However during the weekend and occasionally on work days she wants to go by train. It is more convenient because it’s often hard to find parking space in the inner city. On weekends she might also want to go out for a glas of wine, having a car with her would be a hassle. She lives in the suburb. In a 2 room apartment with parking just outside. She is 30+ and lives together with her boyfriend.

Personality

She enjoys art galleries on her free time and she is generally very interested in exhibitions of different kinds. Therefore she travels around Stockholm quite regularly but not every day. She loves to meet up with her friends and visit cafés and restaurants. She is not much of a planner and is not very organized. Things have a way of sorting themselves out for her. She is not a stressed person, but dislike spending time in places like T - Centralen and would much rather spend her time elsewhere.

Goals

• Get to work fast
• Get to work cheaply.
• Save money every month.
• Travel conveniently.

Meeting + exercise 24/9

We sat down together to have a meeting before the exercise to finish our own studies and State of the Art analysis, and to talk about and reflect over the results of our interviews and studies, so that we together could summarize our results.

During the exercise we started to sketch on the personas and the topics of our scenarios. Together we talked about possible professions and situations and came up with a few different ideas to work on. We also divided the tasks until next weeks meeting. We decided that everyone should write either a persona or a scenario until then and that we during the next meeting will join it all together.

This is our first sketch on the personas:

Possible scenarios:

1. The person is in a hurry, but has no money/the monthly pass has expired on the Access Card
2. The person recently bought a monthly pass, but realises that he/she won’t have the need for it
3. The person doesn’t know whether to buy a monthly pass or to pay by travel. He/she might want to walk och bike to work, but doesn’t know if the weather will allow it the next couple of weeks.

While working on the scenarios we reflected a lot about how the personas and scenarios would affect our project as well as how the ideas of our end product would come to affect the personas in their everyday lives while travelling. We did the work in an iteratively process changing the ideas to be the best possible, modifying our ideas at every step. We tried to imaging how the functionallity of our project might lead to different situations.

Summarizing the State of the Art Analysis

Topics that were covered in every analysis were;

1. Ticket subscription payment service - (Hannes Westberg)
2. Smartphone Application for Statistics of Commuting - (Thomas von Prouss)
3. Smartwatch - (Joakim Adrup)
4. Direct Debit - (Charlotte Skogström)
5. Contactless payment in the London Metro - (Marcus Wallberg)
6. Buying Single Tickets - (Johanna Gustafsson)

1) Implement a possibility to subscribe to a ticket. To make the travel more convenient users should be given the option to connect a SL-access card with a credit card to automatically renew the ticket, so that users never need to worry about an expired ticket again.

http://group-d2.blogspot.se/2015/09/state-of-art-analysis-ticket.html

2) Adding an interactive way of letting commuters see their own statistics of travels gives a technological advantage of future projects. An example of this is integrating a way of letting users purchase a digital ticket directly in their smartphone. This would allow for many systems to be developed around the digital ticket and giving the possibility of a more manageable interactive interface to be updated and maintained.

http://group-d2.blogspot.se/2015/09/state-of-art-analysis-smartphone.html

3) Using Smartwatch technology for commuting purposes. Such as viewing commuting information (train arrivals, ticket information, etc.), easily reachable Smart device to use as a access card. The advantage being that it’s always on your wrist so there is no need to reach for things in your pocket. This makes life easier and traveling through the barrier more conveniently.

http://group-d2.blogspot.se/2015/09/state-of-art-analysis-smart-watch.html

4) Direct debit is an easy way to pay bills and is well suited for recurring bills. With direct debit, payment is deducted automatically on the correct day. If you pay for your travels at the end of each month, instead of paying beforehand, you’d know how many trips you’ve made and how much you should actually pay.

http://group-d2.blogspot.se/2015/09/state-of-art-analysis-direct-debit.html

5) The Contactless Payment in the London Metro lets the travelers use their bank card to pay for each travel instead of paying a monthly card in advance. The users can keep track online of the cost and there are caps that prevents the daily/weekly travel cost to be too high.

http://group-d2.blogspot.se/2015/09/contactless-payment-in-london-metro.html

6) There are many ways of buying single tickets for travellers who don’t use the public transportation very often. In the longer term, the Access Card is the cheapest choice, but to get the advantage of a card, you have to use it at least four times. Buying a ticket through the SL smartphone app, or by text message is not any cheaper than using the ticket vending machine or going to any retailers. Buying your tickets from the ticket vendor or the conductor is even more expensive.

http://group-d2.blogspot.se/2015/09/state-of-art-analysis-buying-single.html


Hopefully this data gathering will give us motivation to develop our project ideas in an iterative way. By reflecting on the usability today we can set experience goals for the travellers so that in the end we have an idea that will improve the overall experience of travelling in Stockholm. 

State of the Art Analysis: Direct Debit

In my blog post titled Interview and Analysis: Is the SL Access Card Outdated? I identified (what I believe to be) a major flaw with the current SL Access Card payment system. If you choose to pay for something you don’t need, simply because you can’t be bothered with the alternative, the system is faulty. Therefor I've chosen to analyze another payment system. Instead of paying beforehand, and having to predict the future, why not pay using direct debit?

Direct debit is an easy way to pay bills and is well suited for recurring bills. With direct debit, payment is deducted automatically on the correct day. Down below, I’ve arranged 5 Ws and one H in order to explain direct debit further:

Who is involved during a transfer?

You, the company you owe money and your bank.

What happens during a transaction using direct debit?

Payments are automatically transferred from your bank account on the morning of the due date. The company notifies you of the payment, the amount to be deducted and the date the payment will be deducted.

Where can you use direct debit?

Direct debit is automatic, you can be anywhere. 

When do you use this form of payment?

Direct debit is well suited for recurring bills (rent, insurance etc.).

Why should you use this form of payment?

If all details are correct, all you need to do is ensure that there is money on your account on the day before the payment date.

How do you start using direct debit?

You agree to let a company deduct money from you account by signing a direct debit agreement with the company.

In conclusion, direct debit is well suited for recurring bills and the SL Access Card is a form of payment falling under this category (though it is a recurring bill you pay ahead of time). If you pay for your travels at the end of each month, instead of paying beforehand, you’d know how many trips you’ve made and how much it all adds up to. You wouldn’t have to know when you need to travel before you know you need to travel. Could this be the way to bring the SL Access Card up-to-date?

The Transport Agency already offer direct debit for the majority of taxes and charges within the automotive field, thus the taxes or charges are deducted automatically without you having to worry about it. Congestion tax is, as an example, paid in arrears.  So, is the way of the Transport Agency the future of the public transit system? Maybe.

References:

• http://www.transportstyrelsen.se/autogiro

• https://www.swedbank.se/privat/kort-och-betalningar/betalningar/betala-rakningar/autogiro/

State of the Art Analysis: Buying Single Tickets

My State of the Art Analysis handles the part of the ticket system where you travel occationally and not frequently enough to buy e.g a monthly card and instead uses single tickets. This is relevant for our task description since we are talking about creating a project that changes SL's paying system, based on the inconvenience that is today.

If you are a short-time visitor in Stockholm, who only wishes to travel a few times, the travelling and paying system might be confusing at first. There are several ways to pay for your tickets in Stockholm today. Regular travellers usually find ways of how to pay for their travels by monthly or yearly passes, but for sporadic travellers, the choices are many.

The most convenient way might be to go to the ticket vendor to buy a single ticket. The ticket vending machine is also a way to buy a ticket, as well as the mobile application, or by text message. The cheapest way, though, is often to go to one of SL’s retailers, who often sells the tickets for a cheaper price. The retailers could be small kiosks, newsagents or hotels.

To buy the correct single ticket, you also need to know how far you are travelling, since travelling through the different zones of Stockholm affects the ticket price. Some routes even requires more than one ticket. Once a ticket is used it lasts for 75 minutes, and there is today no limit for how many tickets you have to use in one day. If you e.g. travel to and from work, you will need two different tickets.

The varying prices for single tickets, T-Centralen to Slussen:

• Single ticket with SL Access Card: 25 SEK (requires an Access Card for 20 SEK plus a minimum purchase of 100 SEK)
• Single ticket using SL’s app, text message or ticket vending machine: 36 SEK
• Ticket vendor or conductor: 44 SEK

The only way to get the cheapest tickets for people travelling seldom today is by buying an Access Card, which requires that you travel at least four times to earn the money back. This means, not even using your phone to get a tickets gives you any advantage over going to the vending machine for example.

Today you have to pay more for the convenience of having the tickets purchased on your smartphone compared to using the Access Card. To buy multiple tickets, you must use the Access Card. Because of the price difference (at least 11 SEK per ticket) it may not encourage more people to use modern tools like the SL smartphone app to buy the tickets.

Based on the data gathered in this analysis, we are able to develop our ideas and establish the constrains and requirements that are necessary for us to move forward and improve the usability.

Group pic time!

Interview Analysis: Q&A

Below, a brief discussion of the questions presented in the post titled Group Analysis of the Interviews will follow.

How come everybody uses a monthly SL Access Card? Because of simplicity?

We strongly believe that sporadic travelers use the monthly SL Access Card because of simplicity, partly because a few members of our group do so themselves, and because one of our interviewees, who is a sporadic traveller, also do so.

Could the reason behind the unwillingness to be billed at the end of each month be that there’s no use for it, or could this be because the interviewees always travel for the money they spend?

We do think there is a use for a system where you pay for your travels after you've traveled. We just questioned the wrong people. Most of the people we interviewed aren't sporadic travelers, our newly refined target group. They're daily travelers using the monthly SL Access Card, and so for them, there's no more money to be saved.

How come almost all interviewees refill their card at the kiosk? Why don’t they prefer doing so on the Net?

Possibly because doing so on the Net is inconvenient. Also, you're often times in a hurry when you find out your SL Access Card has expired, and so refilling your Access Card at a kiosk makes for an easy solution. Kiosks are often located in the near proximity of a station.

Group Analysis of the Interviews

Our goal with this analysis is to gain an overall impression of all raw data gathered during the six separate interviews. We’ve done so by categorizing data and identifying recurring patterns.

Categorization Schema

We chose to categorize the interviews using the questions. By doing so we got a clear view of what the interviewees thought in general. Here’s a picture of out categorization:

Identifying Recurring Patterns

By analyzing the data we’ve come across several different patterns:

• Everyone uses a monthly SL Access Card.

• People traveling regularly doesn’t want to be billed at the end of each month.

• All but one refill their card at the kiosk.

• The majority seems to be interested in an interactive application that displays traveling- and pricing statistics surrounding their trips.

These patterns give rise to some questions worth pondering whilst further developing our project:

• How come everybody uses a monthly SL Access Card? Because of simplicity?

• Could the reason behind the unwillingness to be billed at the end of each month be that there’s no use for it, or could this be because the interviewees always travel for the money they spend?

• How come almost all interviewees refill their card at the kiosk? Why don’t they prefer doing so on the Net?

For a more detailed analysis, please click the links below:

• Breaking Down the Data

• The Subway System

• Is the SL Access Card Outdated?

• Interview - Analysis

• Survey

• Metro Interview and analysis

Contactless payment in the London Metro

The London metro (underground) contactless payment is an expansion of the bank card to use it when you go with the subway. You can pay with the bank card as you would with a regular Oyster Card (similar to the Access Card that is used in Stockholm). The payment system in London differs from Stockholm where the Oyster Card or the contactless payment let you pay for the trip you made, when you leave the subway you tag the card again.

When you pay for the travel, there's a cap on how much you can pay each day and another cap where there’s a max what you pay for a week. Using the contactless pay, there’s no need to bring another card, and all payments are connected to the same card. Instead of billing before the travel the London metro system bills you afterwards. In that way you pay for how much you travel.

Using the contactless payment you get up to one year travel statistics and keep track on the cost. A big risk with this is if you have multiple cards that you pay with, you might exceed the daily or weekly cap, because the cap is defined by card.

This system is very interesting for our project, in Stockholm this could be integrated even further with mobile phones or smart watches to make the travel cheaper, more convenient and gives the traveler better overview of the travel.

Here’s a video description from Transport For London (equivalent to SL) where they describe the contactless payment:

Interview - Analysis

Interview analysis

1: How many days per week do you travel the subway?

Five days a week

2: How do you pay for your trip?

Monthly Access Card

3: How do you refill your ticket?

At the kiosk (Pressbyrån)

4: Instead of paying beforehand for your ticket, would you be interested in recieving an invoice for only the trips you have made, and for example not for weekends you spend at home?

No, I’m happy with monthly access card.

5: Would you be interested in an interactive application that display traveling and pricing statistics for your trips?

Yes, that would be interesting.

Analysis:

It seems like the monthly access card is the preferred option for the regular commuter. It can also be observed that paying at the kiosk is popular. Which is interesting because you might think that paying over internet would be easier. It is also apparent that paying afterwards is not preferred. Why that is would require additional data collection. I can only speculate that the commuters think that paying beforehand is easier.

Interview analysis - Breaking down the data

Interview analysis

Q1: How many days per week do you travel the subway?

A: Seven days a week

Q2: How do you pay for your trip?

A: Monthly Access Card

Q3: How do you refill your ticket?

A: At the terminals like the one at the turnstiles

Q4: Instead of paying beforehand for your ticket, would you be interested in recieving an invoice for only the trips you have made, and for example not for weekends you spend at home?

A: No, I’d rather pay beforehand

Q5: Would you be interested in an interactive application that display traveling and pricing statistics for your trips?

A: Yes, that sounds like a fun gimmick to have. Knowing the pricing for those who don't travel often sounds valuable.

Analyzing the raw data

It seems that for a regular commuter that travels every day, a monthly access card is the best solution. Refilling at the terminal is one solution while the only other way is to either to do it at the SL Center or at a kiosk. Observing the answer to question number four, speculating about the reason for this answer leads me to believe that a regular commuter would not need the extra hassle of paying invoices. The individual that was interviewed was after all traveling every day and therefore would not benefit of not having to pay for trips / days he didn’t make.

However, presenting the findings of question number five, it seems that interactivity is something that adresses most of our target group positively. If adding a way of direct payment via an application in a commuters smartphone is viable, the answers of the invoices could perhaps be different. Still, categorizing all the data from every interview may reveal a recurring pattern of every individual that was interviewed.

Survey

Here is my data recording for the pilot survey that I observed at T-Centralen’s subway station. The interview was made where the travelers are boarding the subway train. At this point I did not do an indirect observation, since the questionnaires (the data recordings/interview) were formed to be a qualitative analysis with focus on the subway payment methods (convenience, etc).

Note that this interview was done in Swedish and here it is translated into English:

1. How many times per week do you travel by subway?

I do it every working day, so it’s roughly 5 days every week.

2. How do you pay for your travels?

I use the access card, and pay per month.

3. How do you refill your Access Card?

I usually go to Pressbyrån, but on occasion I use the ticket vending machines at the entrance of the subway.

4. Instead of paying in advance, would you be interested in being billed at the end of each month with the trips you’ve made?

I think for me as a regular traveler, this way with paying in advance is very convenient; however, if it would lower my monthly cost it could be interesting.

5. Would you be interested in using an app that shows you your travel- and cost statistics?

No, I know how I travel and I go the same way every day, so I don’t see how that would help me in any way.

As a result of this survey, it is possible to see that the person is a regular traveler of SL and that he is looking for the convenience rather than finding the lowest price. It seems though that if the service is easy to use and it’s cheaper, he might be more interested in switching from the access card service to a more pay-what-you-travel service. These findings of the qualitative data can be analysed later with the other results in this group’s data to find patterns.