Achieving a North Star
for TfNSW's Opal
Client
Transport for NSW
UX Design Sprint Team - July 2024
20 UX designers
Role
Team lead for heuristics, personas, HMWs,
IA - information architecture, design & prototyping
Transport for NSW tasked my design sprint team to take a futuristic view the Opal app and plan out a roadmap. What would it look like if we could change the app? How can we solve the pain points of their users?
First step, define what Opal offers now, what it lacks.
Second step, discover the features users need and want in a trip planning app.
Commuters in NSW rely on the Opal Transport app to manage their payments and journeys.
While helpful, the app currently struggles to provide a seamless travel experience due to limitations in its trip planning features, for regular and irregular users. Commuters seek an all in one trip planner that includes all transport modes for a smooth and efficient journey.
TfNSW supplied in-depth user research - transport and safer cities surveys, and transport 1-to-1 user interviews.
But the team required more research into Opal and popular local and global trip planners.
As team lead, I organised heuristic analysis of 14 trip planning apps including Opal, to uncover what each did well and in what areas they lacked usability. Sydney based team members used Opal for their travel journeys to discover as a TfNSW user whether or not the app in its current state met their requirements.
A mixed bunch - Routine Ralph, Caring Caitlyn, Intrepid Isabella, Studious Sam - are regular and irregular users with very specific personal needs.
The four personas highlight the different pain points users face when using public transportation.
Key insights from the combined research, helped the team focus on the most important user issues to tackle.
What 'stars' do we reach for?
A brand new app? Or do we build on Opal's extensive framework?
Looking at what Opal currently offers and areas to improve upon, it was decided the best course of action was to enhance the Opal trip planner with more user-centric functionality and new features to create a one-stop shop.
Time to ideate!
All 20 team members participated in ideating new and refined - features, functionality, design, accessibility, safety and more based on the extensive user research. These creative ideas were grouped, discussed, voted on and refined to come up with a design framework to present to the client.
User Preferences & Help | Search Upgrade | Enhanced Trip Planning & Information | Increased Safety & Accessibility
High level IA shown -
detailed IA for plan a trip, manage payments, my trips, header/footer & widgets created a complete framework for TfNSW.
Figuring out the IA or Information Architecture was key to knowing how to design the new look for Opal.
As team lead, I helped to give shape to how existing Opal functionality and pages would be integrated with new and enhanced features. Without a clear IA, this would have been an unsurmountable task. The IA was further refined after user testing and iterations to hand over a complete package to the client.
Let's explore the ideas
As team lead for design, it was exciting to see how my cohorts worked together in small teams under a very tight deadline to pull together fully functioning prototypes of the key features and upgrades we wanted to showcase to the client in the final presentation. Take a look below at how we turned Opal into a 'one stop' trip planner.
Initial user testing of the features resulted in an average of 81% accuracy in completing the tasks, which considering the project time constraints was very promising.
New user tutorial
Personalised welcome screen
• Interactive greeting & visuals based on time of day & weather
• Easy access to trip planning options, including popular trips
• Clear options for managing payments
Improved trip planning
• Dynamic search - businesses, places, names
• Multiple stops functionality
• Personalise your journey - fastest, cheapest, accessibility
Alternate routes
• Alert user to delays, disruptions to chosen route
• Suggest alternate routes to expedite user's travel journey
• Live journey tracking on in-built maps feature
Report an incident
• Users can identify safety hazard, suspicious activity
• An alert is set & other users notified via incident widget
• Other users can notify/cancel if incident is no longer present
TravelSafe buddy program
• Industry first women's travel safe program
• Users register through police checked portal
• Users can choose a 'buddy' to travel safely to their destination
The team at TfNSW was impressed by how much was achieved in this month long sprint and truly felt we had created a 'North Star' for them to aim for with the Opal app, not only with the new and improved features, but also in creating user-friendly entry points to existing content.
They could immediately see which parts could be fast forwarded and which would need further planning.
My key takeaway was to really listen to what the client is saying or not saying. Our initial brief was succinct and focused solely on trip planning. Whereas in our client meetings, it became clear that the design team at TfNSW wanted us to really stretch our imagination and come up with new ideas based on the research.
Secondly, it is truly a team effort to research, ideate, discuss and ultimately design well-thought out user-centric features and functionality.
Thirdly, as team lead on aspects of this project, I was reminded that it is a balancing act to move the team forwards on a task, while navigating the dynamics of the team members themselves..
I look forward to seeing which features TfNSW implement!
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