Get commuters to switch from the tube, improve their journeys and deliver on TfL’s mantra, “every journey matters.” To do this we had to develop a deep understanding of why the majority of Londoners habitually travel by tube and ignore other, often quicker forms of transport through a customer centric service design methodology. The solution, starting with mobile first and finishing with "design for people not devices" is a responsive service that gets Londoners to their destination via the fastest route, avoiding hold ups and delays, and introducing alternative ways of commuting other than the tube.

75% of Londoners regularly use Transport For London's (TfL) journey planner, creating over 8 million unique visits a month and 250 million visits a year. In a city where “Every Journey Matters” the task of taking an already great site and improving it was never going to be easy, especially as our brief was to get commuters off the tube and onto alternative forms of transport. Working in collaboration with TfL’s Online Marketing Team and build partner Detica, we set out to create a truly responsive service that would work on any device and provide exactly the same excellent experience; bringing together big data, live updates and location based services for the world’s most complex public transport network. All of this whilst educating their customers that there are better alternatives to the tube including buses, bikes, boats and walking. From the outset we put the customer first and delivered every phase through a Lean UX methodology utilising our bespoke Rapid Agile Customer Engagement (RAcE) methodology to fit UCD principles into an Agile methodology. The new journey planner, which replaces a site that had a customer satisfaction score of over 90%, has been more successful than we could of anticipated. Mobile use is up from 45% to over 80% and customer feedback has been resoundingly positive and the site works as planned across phones, tablets and desktops. One outcome, in addition to creating customer experience excellence, was the adoption by TfL of customer first and Lean UX principles, which have been imbedded throughout the business, leading our client to state; “Not only have we are experience changed the way we (TfL) interact with our customers, but how we interact with our selves”. Chris Macleod, Marketing Director, TfL