Sleeper Routes
A website that aims to provide travellers with an easy and understandable space to find night train routes throughout Europe. It’s aim is to enable rail passengers to view all the available sleeper routes so that they can make informed and beneficial travel decisions
My Role
Product Designer & UX Researcher
Methods
Competitive Audit, User Interview, Personas, User Stories, Wireframing, Prototyping and Usability Test
Timeline
2 Months
Sleeper Routes
Sleeper trains are an old-fashioned but effective means of transportation through Europe. Due to challenging and the hard-to-interpret manner of timetables, bad digital UI and poor language translate many sleeper trains are under-utilized by travelers.
Value Proposition
“We help travellers from all walks of life discover the hidden European network of sleeper trains”
Recent infrastructure investments have been made to expand the continent's rail night train network both in capacity and geography scope.
This has been done to increase the number of travellers using the services and create a better experience for the 1.4 million users already utilising the network.
€500 Million
in joint funding from the German, Swiss and Austrian governments has been committed to grow night train network
300,000
Interrail and Eurail tickets are sold annually, creating a large pool of potential users.
Competitive Audit
ÖBB Nightjet
Allows for direct booking on the platform for reservations, Timetable is not limited to night trains but all cross-regional services, The website is not responsive and is limited to a format that is 1275px in width.
Omio
Intuitive visual design with nice use of CTAs, Ability to view past trips, Lack of solid singular focus on the app.
TFL Go
Fresh visually appealing and intuitive layout, Big picture (system-wide viewpoint) and specific station view, Only accessible on iOS and Android devices
User Research
After discovering an area in need of improvement (having personally experienced difficulty in travelling and planning night trains in my own travels), the project proceeded onto the research phase.
User Group Feedback
Intuitive visual design with nice use of CTAs, Ability to view past trips, Lack of solid singular focus on the app.
User Flows
Example of a flow for the route reservation flow within the website
User Journey Map
Experience of a user going through the route reservation flow based on research and interview insights
Design
Having collected a number of user insights, both in a moderated and unmoderated setting, the next step was to create a design that mirrored the needs of users
Looking on to the final product, I was keen to lay down the initial groundwork for the overall design. For this, I developed a wireframe, which was later iterated into a high-fidelity design and interactive prototype all while adhering to core UI styling principles
Wireframe
Designed within Whimsical tool
High Fidelity Design Process
Progressing onto the high-fidelity portion of the project, I employed a design that evoked progress while keeping functionality in mind. This was done by employing blues and green to evoke a sense of movement, all while keeping the user insights in mind and inputting it into the design
Final Iteration
End product of the Sleeper Routes home screen before going to the developers for development
Usability Test
After the design of the platform I went ahead with getting further user insights into the project. Whether it be the visual layout, unintentional pain points or general user frustrations, I hoped that through conducting several unmoderated tests any user difficulties with the platform would be uncovered
Key Insight #1
Both users highlighted issues with finding the wallet feature and preferred a link to this through the account portal
Key Insight #2
Mauro (one of the participants) outlined that he was having difficulty distinguishing the core function of the platform from the homepage
Reflections
One deficit of the project was the lack of clarity on the intention of the product. If/when later iterations of the website go into development, a more singularly focused approach will be taken