The journey map template has been created to help designers empathise with different users, to increase their understanding of what barriers individuals with existing medical conditions may face on a day-to-day basis when using public transport. This template is a tool to help designers break down a user’s journey into individual steps and analyse what stress points may occur for the user at these different steps, and what the solutions may be to the stress points, and whom can offer these solutions.
The solutions may be service based such as identifying an improvement that can be made to the service itself which may include educating staff, increasing the frequency of transportation vehicles provided per hour on a particular route if for example buses on a particular route are always full to capacity. A solution may also be design based, such as the design of smartphone apps to improve the user experience of public transport, design of other products that assist users such as drones, identifying design interactions or touch points and improvements that can be made at these points of interaction to improve user experience such as the design of bus stops, or changes to vehicle design. Designers can also add images to the journey map, such as their own design concepts, or even images of existing transport that illustrate the stress point that needs to be solved. Solutions to stress points may also be addressed by an individual’s family / carers, such as if travelling makes them anxious, then an individual’s family / carers can help them research the best modes of transport, finding maps to print out or save to their smart devices, and pre booking travel in advance of their journey can help to ease their anxiety. Solutions may also be individual based, for example if an individual gets stressed in crowded and loud environments, they can take relaxing and/or familiar music with them to listen to through their headphones to help them to relax if a stressful environment occurs on their journey.
Designers can use this journey map template tool to create journey maps of singular or multiple modes of transportation. Being in a spreadsheet format, the tool invites designers to empathise with the user, keep adding steps to the journey and exploring a variety of solutions to the stress points that occur, facilitating an in-depth analysis of a user’s experience of public transport and how it can be improved in the future.
