Problem

With an increasingly globalized, tech-centered and environmentally conscious world, people are looking for ways to travel, explore and expand their communities through intercity travel. While there are options such as car pooling, trains and flights, intercity bus travel provides affordable, frequent and convenient travel for curious citizens. With competitors such as BusBud and MegaBus holding relatively large market shares, the Greyhound subsidiary, BoltBus needs to better differentiate and position itself within the curbside bus market.

Our Digital Intervention

After gaining insights from our initial research, we arrived at three opportunities for a digital intervention due to an increase in young, college-aged riders. How might we maximize the convenience and reliability of bus travel in a digital age?

A Focused Scope

A common critique from peers concerned our decision to not design an end-to-end journey. By scoping down to immediate implementations, we aimed to provide stakeholders the greatest impact with minimal investment from designers and engineers. We narrowed our focus into three frictions determined from interviews and additional research.

01. Unreliable and Ambiguous Touchpoints

02. Inability to access real-times updates such as delays and stop-relocations

03. Unorganized Touchpoints

Rider Journey and Micro-Moment Intervention

We compiled our observations, and target research into a three hypothetical customer journeys, ultimately landing on one that encompasses our chosen demographic.

The Pre-Ride Experience

We chose the pre-ride experience as our main point of intervention as a majority of consumer issues were experienced at this moment, which trickled into later experiences. With the most existing brand touchpoints with the potential for more, it was important that all interactions at this point are clear and concise. This is to prevent any travel anxieties during the ride, leading to negative perceptions of the company and a potential loss of customers.

Guiding Principles

Informed by prior research and a set of in-person interviews, we defined a set of guiding principles to justify our ongoing work to make sure each decision is grounded on research-backed knowledge. These also became a reference point for us when judging the effectiveness of our solution.

The Urban Adventurer

Adventurous in nature, our persona is anxious about travelling by herself. The Urban Adventurer relies on technology to provide her with consistent and accurate updates detailing her trip. We arrived at this persona after processing the information learned from interviewing over 16 individuals that have ridden an intercity bus. In addition to the Urban Adventurer, we considered a secondary persona when making decisions to ensure we're hitting points for multiple targets.

The Solution

As we determined our point of intervention involved the post-purchase segment of the customer journey, we created three digital and physical access points that would address immediate and potential anxieties faced by a rider along all their touchpoints with BoltBus. This was informed by our understanding that consumers relied on multiple business access points both before and during their trips.

My-Trips

This screen appears immediately after a customer's purchase and acts as a confirmation of their trip. Information was curated to provide necessary trip information while drawing attention to additional resources available on the Boltbus website and on additional email and physical printout touchpoints. The additional role of this page was to allow for immediate access to a rider's ticket, updates on the traveller's route, and the ability to share an itinerary with friends and family

Check out the full mockup

Email Confirmation

Determined through user-research and an understanding of precedents, consumers checked their email after booking to confirm their booking. Our automated email provides the rider with active information regarding their trip, and access to commonly used resources such as the bustracker. To aid information consumption by riders and bus drivers, the presented email functions as a mobile ticket, so customers can easily present their ticket on the day of, or screenshot it as an additional point of reference.

Check out the full mockup

Physical Ticket

This physical rider access point was motivated by the desire to curate information specific to a traveller's chosen route. As the majority of consumer-business interaction during the trip is handled by the driver, the printed information resembles what would be told to a rider before and during their ride. This allows for a polished for both customers and drivers as riders have readily available information that acts as communication between them and the business.

Rider/Customer Value

Iterating off the initial frictions and needs found through interviews and the creating of our persona, we determined three major rider values. We centralized our thinking behind these values by referring to our guiding principles and comparing them to the optimal target journey.

Value to Business

Customer retention and finding new customers was one of the original problems BoltBus was facing due to poor brand perception. By focusing on immediate enticement and the early-stages of a purchase, we aim to improve purchase rate, increase customer retention and establish a positive immediate brand perception as customers often read reviews before proceeding with a potential purchase.

A Consistent Layout

We established a strict style guide used throughout our intervention. The current and previous BoltBus website utilizes an array of styling and elements, leading to hierarchy issues and greater cognitive overload through Miller's Law for a customer to process. With a smaller choice for styling, customers easily distinguish important interaction points among the broad content, such as hyperlinks and buttons.