Bus
Karde!
Redefining Jabalpur’s public transportation experience
Issuer
Indian Institute of Information Technology,
Design and Manufacturing, Jabalpur (Academic)
deliverables
Research Data, Concept Prototypes
Roles
Project Lead, UI Designer, Design Researcher
creative fields
tags
The brief was to develop a Smart City mission in any Indian city. We chose Jabalpur as it would give us a chance to explore the city of our design school. For our problem area, we chose public transportation as it was a problem that we all faced as students trying to get around a new city. Our goal was to integrate the best aspects of the various modes of transport available. The challenge was that various scenarios had a variety of possible solution combinations. Bus Karde! was born as a result of this challenge. It gives users the best of all worlds by putting them in the driver's seat of their travel experience.
Project Phases
Getting Our Hands Dirty
Preliminary research conducted provided a sense of scale and constraints of the problem. This stage included identifying stakeholders, defining target users, formulating hypotheses and plotting journey and service maps of personas and services. Analysis of relationships between passengers and transportation modes, yielded the basis of a possible solution.
Case Study & Policy Review
Looking at existing solutions provides vital insights into what works and what doesn't. A review of case studies around the world in similar areas provided us with possible features and product directions. We also studied relevant transportation policies in India to ensure legal and ethical compliance of our solution.
Identify & Define
In this phase we identify the final problem by evaluating whatever we have learnt so far. We evaluated our hypothesis against our data to look for possible solutions and intervention areas. Secondary research aided in defining keywords of our problem-solution framework. A problem matrix helped us prioritize problem areas and finally frame a problem statement.
Delivery
Our outcome had three deliverables, a brand, a mobile application and concept bus stops. The mobile application is the primary artifact driving users' experiences. The name was carefully selected to enable word-of-mouth propagation of the solution. The bus stop concepts were the extra-mile we went to showcase a future area of intervention.
1.1 — BRAINSTORM & MIND MAPPING
Brainstorming and Mind Mapping helped us visualize Jabalpur as a city and as a Smart City mission, and where and how they intersected. This exercise also aided in selecting our domain and provided a jump off point for persona development and project planning.
Payments
Digital payments preferred to cash.
Bus passes are provided to regular commuters.
Usage Patterns
Buses are the most preferred mode of daily commute.
Ola (Rideshare service) is not frequented by most people in Jabalpur.
Regular autos (Non Ola) are more preferred than rideshare.
Commute Distance
Buses preferred for long distance travel (>5KM).
Autos preferred for short distance travel (≤5KM).
Pedestrians do not walk more than 5KM in one way.
Young People (<31 Years)
Students prefer scooter and autos to buses.
Students can pay a varying fare for the same route while taking autos but not other forms of public transport.
This demographic prefers autos and rideshare over other forms of transport.
Miscellaneous
Buses routes are well connected though not well broadcast.
Improving of last mile connectivity will increase public transport users.
Aesthetics play an important role to commuters.
1.3 — STAKEHOLDERS AND TARGET USERS
Stakeholders were mapped onto an onion diagram based on the relative ease of intervention and their direct effect on commuter experience. Target users were then selected as the Jabalpur youth (<31 Years) as they would require the least work but provide the broadest reach (80/20 rule)
1.4 — PERSONAS AND JOURNEY MAPS
We created four personas: "The First Years", "The 1%", "The Price Should Be Right" and "The Unfortunate". These personas are based on three pivotal factors: Safety, Convenience and Price. A fictional journey of 30KM for each of these four personas was broken down and analyzed at every step. These journey maps are plotted based on real experiences, and each journey map provides information on resources spent, points of interaction and empathy data. All these maps helped us understand user behavior and clarify areas of intervention.
View PDF version of the Journey Maps ↗
1.5 — SERVICE FLOW DIAGRAMS
While journey mapping provides the behavior patterns of or users, it does not provide us with the context within which the transport services operate. Service Flow Diagrams try to visualize every possible scenario of a mode of transport. This provides us with the possibility of utilizing a service's properties to direct a user's decisions.
View a PDF of the Service Flow Diagrams ↗
1.6 — 5W + 1H ANALYSIS
5W + 1H analysis was performed to break down the relationship between commuters and the various modes of transport.
Secondary research commenced with a policy review followed by reviews of case studies. Implementations of public transport in various parts of the world helped us understand what worked (and what did not) under what circumstances. It also provided us with directions for our solution. A policy review was necessary to ensure compliance with various legal frameworks. Post desk research, we proceeded to obtain more data via interviews (sit-downs, guerilla, shadowing, etc.) and observations (naturalistic and participant).
Relevant findings from our secondary research are summarized below.
Interviews
Safety and sanitation are major concerns for passengers. They feel that authorities are neglectful of these concerns.
Crowding is a huge problem for passengers. Younger commuters prefer auto-rickshaws or ridesharing citing this as a major reason.
Only the bus service of Jabalpur city falls under the jurisdiction of Smart City Jabalpur.
Smart City Jabalpur runs the bus service at a loss. They currently plan increasing bus routes and the number of buses per route to increase user count and possibly reduce loss.
Vandalism is a major concern for public transportation providers.
No reliable or convenient source of information for bus routes other than word of mouth or the less reliable Chalo app.
The currently available Chalo app service is unreliable and in limited use. Bad user experience and an outdated interface were cited as reasons for not using it.
Differently-abled persons found it hard to use the bus service and hence prefer either ridesharing or personal transport.
People prefer auto-rickshaws and rideshares for their last-mile connectivity and speedier service than buses.
Passes and concessions are available and can easily be obtained from bus conductors, though this information is not widely known.
Observations
No signage and route information at bus stops.
Auto-rickshaw drivers are aware of the fact that bus timings are unreliable and have bad last-mile connectivity. As a result, a lot of autorickshaws wait outside or near bus stops for frustrated bus passengers.
A large number of travelers travel with sacks and not bags.
A majority of commuters have smartphones and 4G internet.
Young adults, mostly students returning from coaching classes or school, college students are the highest daily commuters by volume. Daily wage workers are the highest bus commuters.
People prefer Ola for its minimal wait times.
Crowding usually occurs when buses are late. People get into a crowded bus or opt for other transport modes even though the next scheduled bus is minutes away.
Policies Review
It is mandatory to make public vehicles suitable for differently-abled people. However, most modes of public transportation either fully lack accessibility features or are implemented in ways that defeat their purpose.
There is an increasing push for sustainable, energy-efficient and overall environmentally friendly technology and methods for public transportation.
Vehicle colors and decals are subject to transportation laws.
Case Studies Reviewed
Octopus Card, Hong Kong
m-indicator, Mumbai
Chalo, Jabalpur
BRTS, Ahmedabad
NoI, Dubai
PHASE THREE — IDENTIFY AND dEFINE
In phase three we cumulate all our data, verify our assumptions and cement our directions. We finally identify and define our problem statement, post which we begin working on our final solution.
Journey: The commute taken during the duration of work from a user's point of initial origin to the final destination.
Public Transport: Any form of transport that can be used by the public.
Work: The reason for travel. This may be in hours, days, weeks, months, etc.
Corridor: A large area of operation for an individual part of a service (Example: The corridor of a bus route).
Point of Initial Origin: The starting point of a user's journey, preceding which no movement takes place on public roads/paths.
Route: The way(s) taken to reach a point of boarding or drop-off as a commuter.
Final Destination: The end point of a user's journey. The point after which no movement takes place on public roads/paths.
Payments
Digital payments preferred to cash.
Bus passes are provided to regular commuters.
Usage Patterns
Buses are the most preferred mode of daily commute.
Ola (Rideshare service) is not frequented by most people in Jabalpur.
Regular autos (Non Ola) are more preferred than rideshare.
Commute Distance
Buses preferred for long distance travel (>5KM).
Autos preferred for short distance travel (≤5KM).
Pedestrians do not walk more than 5KM in one way.
Young People (<31 Years)
Students prefer scooter and autos to buses.
Students can pay a varying fare for the same route while taking autos but not other forms of public transport.
This demographic prefers autos and rideshare over other forms of transport.
Miscellaneous
Buses routes are well connected though not well broadcast.
Improving of last mile connectivity will increase public transport users.
Aesthetics play an important role to commuters.
3.3 — PROBLEM MATRIX
A problem matrix helped us identify problems and areas of intervention with respect to domains and touchpoints. This exercise also helped us prioritize problems as well as efficiently tackle multiple problems in one go.
Cells with solid fill are problems that occur in multiple areas.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How might we design and develop a connected, hassle-free travel experience for a commuter in Jabalpur city?
4.1 — BRANDING
Branding was an essential part of the solution as it would provide commuters with a renewed experience. This was necessary to ensure that people would be attracted to it rather than look at it as just another attempt by the government to entice users. The brand had to be approachable, friendly, catchy and "roll of the tongue’".
“Bas Karde” is a common phrase in Hindi (the local language) which translates to “Just do it please!”. Splitting the words, we get “Bas” (Hindi for Just, which we played with and used the English “Bus”) and “Karde” (Hindi for “do it”). The final brand, roughly translated, enables people to tell someone to book a bus, wordplay along the lines of “Google it”. The wordplay and playful nature of the logo make it friendly and approachable rather than look like a government mobile apps that usually have hard, authoritative logos and UIs.
4.2 — MOBILE APPLICATION
The way we could connect the various modes of transportation available in Jabalpur would be through a mobile application. Surveys conducted reassured us that a majority of commuters have a smartphone with an internet connection. This also meant that there were people who did not (more on this later). The application’s primary purpose is to make people use the bus more.
CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK
Over the course of the project, we had identified a variety of problems associated with commuting in Jabalpur city. Bus Karde! solves only a handful of those problems. The main goal of our project was to create a hassle-free commute experience for a user from start to finish, and in the process help Smart City Jabalpur increase the number of bus users. While the solution does solve these two main goals, other problems such as sanitation, safety and crowding remain either unsolved or in need of improvement. Future work can include various laterals from policy design to traveler awareness campaigns and route replanning. Public transportation is vital to cities of the future as it is environmentally friendly, prevents traffic jams and provides a solid alternative for travel to those who cannot afford to buy personal vehicles; Acknowledging the need to improve its public transportation is a step in the right direction.