2024
Service Safari, UX Research, Content Strategy, UIUX, Product Design
In Stockholm, commuters access public transport mainly through the SL app or with a physical card. Although the card can be topped up via the app, many still prefer buying tickets from ticket agents as their main method. Our goal was to identify behavioural barriers preventing users from going digital and to create a solution that moves at least 20% of commuters to use the app consistently.
SOLUTION
We redesigned the SL app to simplify how commuters buy and manage their tickets — turning a complex, confusing experience into one that feels intuitive, trustworthy, and effortless. Our solution focused on reducing friction, reinforcing confidence, and building motivation through small emotional cues that made the app feel more personal, human, and reliable.
ROLE
My contribution to this project was leading the UX research, conducting user interviews and collaborating on synthesising the findings to produce shared results. These provided the foundation for ideation and our rapid prototyping, during which I supported wireframing and UX/UI iterations.
Built with Ann-K Friedrich, Ajitha Chellam, Ed Pelham, Massi Abibsi and Óli Hall. Completed in three weeks.
In contrast, leading transit apps focus on simple key actions/positioning, such as “Buy Ticket” or “My Ticket”, making the experience feel personalised and focused right from the start.
Both early observations gave me the intuition that it’s not digitalisation that deters users, but the complexity of the digital process itself, which drives them to abandon the app and seek help from agents instead.
Early Service Safari exploration, Category audit and evaluation
We found that:
Students’ barriers are about usability + flow
Seniors’ barriers are about mindset + habits
From this understanding, students are at a higher leverage point for behaviour change because their issues can be solved through design and flow improvements rather than cultural change.
Hypothesis to determine user pattern
While comfortable with technology, students struggled with the app's complexity. The more friction they encountered, the quicker they lost interest and were less likely to make the app part of their routine.
How Might We improve a ticket-buying journey that feels engaging, efficient and intuitive, one that builds trust and fits naturally into commuters’ daily routines?
User interviews and synthesis session
Behaviour = Motivation x Ability x Prompt
By viewing our insights through this lens, we identified specific moments where the SL app lost users because the experience wasn’t engaging, efficient, or intuitive enough to sustain trust and habit.
We mapped each solution to our design goals: Engaging, Efficient, and Intuitive.
FBM-based ideation to address user drop-off moments in the SL app
Build emotional connection, trust and small wins so users want to use the app
Simplify the flow to minimise steps, cognitive load, and confusion so users can complete tasks with ease
Surface timely reminders to guide users to take action at the right moments
100%
task completion
27%
error rate
They particularly appreciated our inclusion of seniors, the deselected persona, as it demonstrated thoughtful prioritization between extreme user groups and strengthened the logic behind our chosen direction. The redesigned flow comparison (old vs new) was noted as especially impactful in illustrating tangible improvement.
The client’s feedback affirmed that our approach succeeded in making the SL ticketing experience more intuitive and trustworthy, while encouraging us to explore the onboarding concept further to drive greater adoption among non-app users.