Case Study
01Overview
Centré empowers users to travel on their own terms by making use of smart city advancements that make the smart trip planner possible. The app allows them to choose multiple destinations along their route, choose the method of transport best suited for their trip, and enables seamless ticket purchases and boarding. Centré is designed not only to streamline the travel process of its users, but also to put them at the center of their journey.
02Background
In the age of information and technology terms like AI, IoT, and virtual reality can be used within any industry. Many of these industry innovations are ones that we enjoy without realizing the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to make it all possible. For this project brief the challenge was to be visionaries of the future and imagine how the latest advancements in technology could help improve the experience of smart city living. Travel and transportation were selected as the focus for the project because of an identified opportunity to do something more in that space beyond improving self-driving cars, and instead doing something that still felt human.
03Approach
Interviews were conducted to understand the pain points associated with traveling and discovering a new city, while a service safari was conducted to get a first-hand account of the limitations of using public transport and planning a day around it. The research revealed that time constraints, schedule planning, and unfamiliarity with the city were major issues people encountered when trying to make the most of their trip. During data synthesis these findings manifested themselves in the form of the key insight that travel is not user centered. Instead, people have to schedule their trip around bus times, business hours, and even wait times, often having to miss out on something they wanted to do.
04Goals and Challenges
Travel is something few people get to do a lot of during their lifetimes, and when they do, they are lucky if they get to experience the feelings of adventure and excitement that wanderlust is often associated with. Traveling in a new city should not be about navigating it, but discovering it. However, the current experience has users scheduling around bus times, business hours, and time restraints. The effects of this includes users missing buses, not understanding the value of the transport they pay for, planning to compromise on destinations, and being misinformed about getting around in general. Many of the challenges travelers encounter can even discourage their desire to travel because they feel intimidated or alienated.
05Outcome
Centré is intuitive at the core and eliminates the learning curve of using public transport and planning a day out in an unfamiliar city. Advances in smart city technology allow Centré to conveniently schedule multiple destinations into a smart itinerary that accounts for proximity to other points of interest, opening and closing times, travel times, meal times, average time spent at locations, and weather. Centré also economically finds the most cost-effective methods of transport and provides the user the ability to buy or reserve tickets within the app. Centré is also designed to be flexible and adapts the itinerary to fit the needs of the user whether that means adding or deleting a destination along the way. The user can finally feel at ease and put away their notepads as Centré takes care of the stress and brings back the adventure and excitement of travel.
