Type: Individual project | Client: Ruter | Timeline: 2022 (8 months) | Role: UX Designer & Researcher
Incentivising increased public transport adoption among car users in Oslo to reduce climate emissions.
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How might we design a digital user experience to incentivise increased public transport adoption among car users in Oslo?
Brief
As part of my undergraduate thesis for the University of Manchester, I explored designing a digital user experience to incentivise increased public transport adoption among car users in Oslo. This was done with support from Ruter, the city’s public transportation authority.
The project was initiated based on research from 200+ academic papers. These outlined “living car-free” as amongst the most impactful individual actions to reduce annual personal climate emissions and spur broader systemic change in society. Moreover, a majority of reviewed papers highlighted the potential of a smartphone-based incentive system to spur behavior change. A critical constraint of this project was therefore incorporating a solution into Ruter’s existing mobile application in Oslo.
Outcome
An 80-page report detailing the project’s analysis, a summarising slide deck, and a digital prototype of the devised solution.
My proposal: incorporating supplementary value propositions into Ruter’s current mobile offering, personalised after users’ dominant transport mode. These address three core reasons why Oslo-based car users don’t use public transport today.
Problem definition
The problem definition resulted from qualitative user/expert interviews and a literature review of past work on climate change mitigation, smartphone-based incentive systems, and characteristics of car users in Oslo.
The problem was broken down into three research objectives:
01
Understand key barriers to why car users in Oslo are not attracted to using public transport
02
Explore relevant UX considerations to design an incentive system for public transport in Oslo
03
Identify incentives/features sufficient to spur behaviour change among car users in Oslo
Data collection
Multiple data sources informed the ideation process:
Systematic review of 200+ research papers to explore best practices for sustainable travel incentivisation and weaknesses in existing solutions.
Interviews with three representative users (followed up with a usability study with five users).
Five expert interviews involving product managers and UX designers at Ruter and two academic researchers.
Findings & Analysis
Commonly used incentive strategies in prior successful studies and mobile applications:
01 Challenges & goal setting
02 Behavioural monitoring & feedback
03 Tailoring content to user needs
04 Social comparisons between users
05 Rewards
3 core reasons for why car users in Oslo don’t use public transport:
01 Time consuming
02 Delays are usual
03 Expensive tickets
Defined user persona based on conducted research
Ideation
01 Onboarding screens
Onboarding screens outlining the new incentive scheme. These are personalised based on users’ dominant transport mode, as Ruter hosts users with differing travel needs. Highlighting features targeted towards car users might not be relevant to, e.g. bicycle users.
02 Favourising travel routes
New functionality to favourise travel routes. This allows users to quickly and easily access relevant information and actions related to their frequent commutes. This feature is also the backbone of other value propositions such as personalised notifications when your favourite route is delayed.
Proven incentive strategies used:
Tailoring content to user needs
Behavioural monitoring & feedback
Reasons for not using public transport addressed:
Public transport is time-consuming
Public transport is usually delayed
03 Personalised notifications
Notifying users when public transport is delayed or the quickest option. Users will be notified when their favourite commute is delayed or when it is faster to use public transport than driving a car for that route. Moreover, it was envisioned that users would be provided with the option to purchase a discounted ticket for this journey to stimulate further behaviour change.
Proven incentive strategies used:
Tailoring content to users’ needs
Behavioural monitoring & feedback
Rewards
Reasons for not using public transport addressed:
Public transport is time-consuming
Public transport is usually delayed
Public transport is expensive
04 Profile page(s)
Profile page(s) to spur social interactions. This displays travel metrics intended to incentivise increased public transport usage:
Streaks: days in row users have used public transport
Total points: points users have received by using public transport
Money saved: money saved using public transport relative to a gasoline car
CO2 saved: CO2 saved using public transport relative to a gasoline car
Explanatory pop-ups are also provided for each metric. Users are additionally able to compare their metrics with friends they follow.
A new “Rewards” page also enables free/discounted tickets to be claimed using points collected through repeated public transport commutes.
Proven incentive strategies used:
Tailoring content to users’ needs
Behavioural monitoring & feedback
Rewards
Challenges & Goal setting
Reasons for not using public transport addressed:
Public transport is expensive
Testing
To validate the proposed solution, a usability study with five representative users was conducted. The findings could be summarised in two overarching themes:
01
Users wanted further clarification of particular features.
E.g. “How much time would I save using X feature”
02
Users wanted a more personalised user experience.
E.g. “I want the reference in my travel statistics to be an electric car since I drive one myself”
User experience map based on findings from user testing
Final revisions
01 Added favourite route
The revised component rather displays if users’ regular commutes are delayed or on time, and when they need to leave their current location to not miss the train or bus.
02 Explanatory pop-ups
The revised components provide more detailed information and are presented more intuitively.
03 Notification of when public transport is the quickest
The revised component intuitively outlines how much faster it would be to take public transport than their car for their favourite route and prompts them to buy a ticket. The ticket discounts were disregarded as users stated the value of a quicker commute to be sufficient.
What I learned
This project gave me a better understanding of using a rigorous academic research process to inform my design decisions.
I learned to work under strict resource constraints by not having easy access to fully representative interview samples, Ruter’s design components, or critical industry expertise.
The project was a great way to exercise seamlessly integrating a solution for a specific user segment while considering the larger user base of an existing product.