IRCTC Rail connect - app redesign
When it comes to traveling in India, Railway is the most preferable and affordable mode. It is one of the largest rail networks ranking fourth in the list after the US, China, and Russia. The rail network comprises 121,407 km of track over a route of 67,368 km and 7,349 stations transporting 8.107 billion passengers and over 1.108 billion tonnes of freight annually.
According to IRCTC, the first e-ticketing Android app, the “IRCTC Connect” was launched in 2014. In a bid to make train ticket booking easier, IRCTC had revamped its mobile app and relaunched it as “IRCTC Rail Connect” in 2017and has been downloaded by more than 3 crore users and since January 2017, and more than 14 crore bookings have been made from it.
Challenge
Redesign its mobile application using the User-Centered Design approach with the recent UX practices and proper UI Design eliminating the strain of using all the services offered by the app and easing the ticket booking experience of Common man.
Client
Personal Project
My Role in the process
My part was to conduct researches and surveys, mapping users' journey and flows, analyzing use cases, ideating and, wireframing the final iterations, and eventually prototyping and testing the design against a couple of benchmarks and once good to go, creating modish high fidelity Visual designs.
Why I chose this app?
This app has around 10M+ downloads and has done excellent business since its launch. However, if audited, there are an ample number of flaws present in the design, degrading its user experience and leaving huge room for improvement.
Competitive Analysis
Analyzing competitors helps us better understand what components and features work well and whatnot. Though there are no direct competitors of the IRCTC Rail Connect app, there are huge apps offering similar services for various needs say the local train ticket booking, Metro ticket booking, live train status, PNR checking, etc.
As per my findings, below are a few essential features that other platforms are offerening -
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Multiple languages are supported
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Live train status is available
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Platform number and coach position is available in advance
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Guided toor for new users
User Research
I started by conducting interviews with people having prior travel experience by the counter and online tickets.
A couple of them were using the app for tatkal bookings as well, some were booking tatkal and general through agents and, the rest were using counter tickets for some reason like not aware about the app or not comfortable using it.
Demographics
The key Audience of this app would include people aged between -
18-20 who might be booking tickets for their trips with friends/family or booking on behalf of their parents/relatives, etc.
20-50 who would be using this app for their Business travels, seasonal or frequent travel, occasional traveling, etc
50-70 generally are not much used to using such applications frequently and mostly rely on counter booking as they are used to it.
Use Cases
Prerequisite knowledge/experience
Users should have a smartphone or access to some computer system and a minimum basic knowledge of using smartphones or computers.
Besides this, some of the common ticket booking users are enlisted below -
1. Tatkal bookings users-
Users using the tatkal booking option remain specific with the train and their seat availability details. They compare all these details beforehand and directly jump to ticket booking as soon as the window opens.
Pain Points -
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Automatically logs out of the app and session get terminated, tickets get sold out till the user logs in again
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Have to enter journey details again and again
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Can't jump directly to the desired train booking
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Filling card details or logging into wallets consumes time
2. General Bookings users -
People are either choosing general bookings through the app or counter and do not include any extra charge for unlike for tatkal booking and can be booked unless the chart is prepared.
Painpoints -
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Gets logged out of the app until they understand and complete the booking process.
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Has to go through a prolonged process to Sign Up.
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Always forget the previous password and PIN so keep resetting them.
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Occasionally books ticket so need to update the app everytime before booking as the previous version never supports.
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Repeatedly filling same passenger details for different bookings is very exhausting(no insight into the master list functionality)
3. Extreme Users -
Solutions for extreme can help provide some solutions which normal users were not comfortable speaking out or might never notice those issues were there.
For example, users carrying huge luggage, babies with them need to have enough prior travel details like train delays and running status, platform details, etc so they can plan their cab drops accordingly.
Painpoints -
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Having no platform details in advance.
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Not sure about the coach position so have to rush at the last moment.
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Need to download third-party apps to gets updates about the live train details.
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Not sure where and how to start
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Not comfortable with the app's language.
4. Non Users -
There are people who are still fine with the counter booking process as they are either not aware of this app or find it much difficult to use such apps even though they are having basic knowledge or hands-on with smartphones.
Painpoints -
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Forgot user ID password a long back.
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Don't have an IRCTC account.
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Don't have internet banking enabled or no ATM cards.
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Having insecurities providing personal and card details.
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Didn't get help to book online as not aware of the process.
What's motivating users to use this app?
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In a hurry, no time to stand in the queue
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Having e-ticket option, no chance of losing ticket
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Don't need to visit the station for cancel/refund
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Possible to book tatkal without tiring whole night at the station
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All train information available at a glance
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Can easily check the confirmation status
Personas and Storyboards
Based on the interviews conducted, I've prepared the below Personas covering different demographics.
Meet Gopal
Gopal is an Engineering student based in Mumbai and his hometown is Nagpur. He keeps visiting his parents at least once a month. He also visits them for most of the festivals possible like Makar Sankranti, Holi, Diwali, etc. He is a smartphone user and frequent user of the IRCTC rail app as well.
Last Holi, Gopal could not pre-schedule his vacations as his Test series dates were tentative. So he opted for Tatkaal booking through this app. He was booking for Sleeper class a day before this festival. As he's an active member of it he had to just log in and complete the process for Tatkaal booking.
So at sharp 11 am he logged in into the app and started booking under pressure. Even though his payment was successful, he didn't a ticket. He panicked and tried logging in again but before he could book, the tickets were already sold out. This is because logging in again, entering the captcha, selecting the appropriate train, and confirm took a huge time, and tickets generally get sold out within a couple of minutes and he could not visit home for this festival.
Meet Ramesh
Ramesh lives in a small town near Nashik with his wife and works at a construction site. He has a son who stays in Surat with his family due to his job. Ramesh has to frequently travel to Mumbai for some treatment. He is ill for a couple of years and taking treatment at some Hospital in Mumbai.
He has a smartphone gifted by his son but is using it only for phone calls because he's very much uncomfortable to use it for any other purpose. He is not friendly with the language and UI of the app and finds it very difficult to book a ticket online. So rather than bothering his son every time, he takes a day off and visits Railway station for ticket booking standing in queue for hours most of the time.
Customer Journey Maps
Below is an example scenario where the user is opting for general ticket booking for his trips from various source and destinations.
Scenario
Vijay is planning a trip with his family this summer vacation. He is looking for some train route with least travel time and within his budget.
Expectations
- Details of all trains running on the same route
- Can compare travel and arrival time, fare, Confirm probability and other details
Empathy Mapping
Based on the interviews conducted and its findings, I clubbed Empathy maps of a couple of users and presented them below.
Information Architecture
I mapped the application according to the services offered prioritizing the essential uses of the app. I also included the Train running status and Chart Vacancy screens which would help the users to easily check for the vacancy in any coach and tracking the live status of trains eliminating the need of downloading third-party apps for this.
User Flow
This is a very basic flow that the user would go to either book ticket or check the status of PNR, train, or seat availability.
Ideation
Based on the user's pain points gathered, I've done a few ideations for the new features and rearranging the existing features in a way easily accessible the vast target audience.
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Wireframes
After a few iterations, I finalized screens from various iteration that should cover most of the pain points and missing features without much disturbing the flow of the app as revamping the flow might create further confusion for the users who are already used to this flow since a long time.
Wire Flow
I created this wire flow of the app based on the wireframes and user flow at the component and layout level so to understand the exact flow of the app.
Prototype
I created a Mockup of the app to conduct user testing so that any confusion or difficulty with the handling or features can be caught at this stage and can be corrected before proceeding to the Visual Designs.
User Testing
I conducted user testing on the above mockup prototype. Most of the users had prior ticket booking experience either with the app, agents or through the counter so they could easily empathize with this new design.
Affinity Mapping
I have organized my findings of user testing in this affinity map according to the design success, issues found in the new design and possible solutions that can be proposed for every page having issues either with the experience or features.
High Fidelity Visual Designs and Style Guide
All the findings and pain-points gathered so far are covered in the below redesigned Visual screens along with the newly added features.
Behind the scenes
Designers might assume that some actions are pretty obvious like filling payment
Take away
Designers might assume that some actions are pretty obvious like filling payment details on some page using your card, net banking, wallet, etc. but being a part of this digitized era where we are performing most of the actions digitally, it is difficult to imagine the world from a perspective where people find it really painful to differentiate between clickable and non-clickable areas. So it is essential to get into users' shoes before starting off with any design with our own assumption.
I understood the significance of adding minute details which creates a huge difference in the usability of the app.
A Design is never-ending nor its iterations, we can only find a point with the best usability and deploy the product.
