Urban Navigation Supercharged - With Viktor Eperjesy | đ§ Design Aloud
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Urban Navigation Supercharged â With Viktor Eperjesy | Design Aloud
In this episode, we have a conversation with Viktor Eperjesy, Innovation Portfolio lead at Supercharge. With a background in Business Administration, Management, and Leadership, he has vast experience as a Business consultant, Product strategist, and now as an Innovation Portfolio Lead. With his help, in this episode, we delve into the creation of Budapest GO, a game-changer application for public transport in Budapest.
âInnovation is not something completely brand new. Itâs something, an idea that may be repurposed from one domain to another.â
Design Aloud Podcast | Season 03 Episode 04
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Episode details
Viktor Eperjesy has vast experience as a Business consultant, Product strategist, and now as an Innovation Portfolio Lead. Heâs worked with clients in banking, insurance, mobility, and logistics, with a notable project being the Budapest GO initiative with BKK (Center of Budapest Public Transport).Â
In this conversation with him, listeners can learn:
- The importance of business knowledge for designers, highlighting that it can help them influence strategic decisions and articulate the value and potential return of certain design features to stakeholders.
- The Budapest GO project. From start to finish. The Challenges faced, specifically about the detailed insights and learnings from the 50 user interviews conducted, discussing how this data helped shape the core design and functionalities across the app in a user-centric manner.
âThere are a lot of good designers out there. They can create really nice looking screens that are user friendly [âŚ] But if youâre building on top of that some business knowledge, and youâre able to think with the head of business stakeholders, thatâs a way to differentiate yourself .â
Transcript
Karthik: [00:00:00] Hello, folks. Hope youâre doing well. Today we have Victor with us. Welcome to UX studio. Iâm really glad to have you here. Iâm really happy that you said yes to this podcast. Iâm really excited for the conversation that weâre going to have today.
For the listeners out there, can you give a brief introduction for us.Â
Viktor: Sure. And thank you for the invitation. So my name is Victor Eperjesy. I work as an innovation portfolio lead at Supercharge. Iâve been doing this for 3.5 years and during this 3.5 years, Iâve been lucky enough to be involved in a lot of projects where we built amazing products in different industries.
So Iâve had projects in banking, insurance, mobility and logistics, and I think the most notable and most interesting one is Budapest Go, which Iâm going to talk about today. And I hope itâs going to be valuable for you and your audience. Originally, I do have a business [00:01:00] background, so I went to the Corvinus University of Budapest, where I studied business administration and then later on management and leadership.
Then later on, I did some management and digital consulting as well. And then from there, I switched to design. You know, Iâm going to talk about that, why that change happened, but basically what I do as of today is I help our clients to explore new ways to grow new product strategies, formulate product goals and product vision, and I also help shape the scope of the product. So thereâs that element of strategic thinking in there.
But there are also different responsibilities that I have. I also support our sales team. I help understand early on what our clients need in terms of design. Should we do research? What type of research should we do? Should we do an art direction? So thatâs another hat that I wear. [00:02:00]
And I also allocate a portion of my time to practical product design. And I still, as of today, do some designs. And the reason being that it helps me maintain a pragmatic perspective. And also stay closely connected with UX and technology trends. So thatâs really useful.
And as part of the job when I talk with our clients about product strategy and product goals, I usually do a lot of workshops. And these structured workshops are where we actually delve into these topics. They serve as a platform for collaborative exploration and decision making.
So basically thatâs what I do. I wear a lot of hats. I combine strategic thinking, collaborative workshops, and also hands on product design to drive innovation forward.Â
Karthik: Thatâs amazing. Thatâs a great introduction. Thatâs a lot of hats to wear and maybe not this podcast, but maybe in the next one [00:03:00] we can talk about how you manage your time and creative energies because it does sound a lot. Iâm happy that you do all of these things and Iâm quite curious to learn more about this, especially strategic thinking because back in last winter actually UX studio had this objective of building our own strategic thinking. And it was a really good workshop for us and also an exercise for us.
And I think itâs very valuable when you want to combine business and design. How did you get into the mindset of becoming a strategist or innovator from being a business consultant? And do you think these two things are different?Â
Viktor: Yeah. There are some differences. So for me, the motivation I think always have been even when I started business consulting is that, you know, I want to build new things. I want to contribute to building new things, not just operate [00:04:00] existing stuff.
And that there was a source of motivation and of course you can also continue contribute to that as a business consultant or a digital consultant. But your output is usually some kind of presentation and in implementation youâre usually not involved. Itâs not even sure if what you recommended will be implemented.
So thatâs a question. And that made it feel a bit too abstract for me. So I was kind of missing the tangible results of my work because in product design, when youâre building products, the result is so tangible. Itâs, you know, you build something, you put it out there and people can actually use it.
And, and itâs just such a joy to see that, you know, people are all enjoying your product. Theyâre using it. It makes their life easier and more comfortable. So itâs a really great feeling. Yeah. So maybe the difference is I think the main [00:05:00] difference between like business consultancy and innovation strategies that with innovation, youâre youâre focused on growth, not on efficiency.
So you want to explore new areas, how we can grow with a new service with a new product with a new feature. So youâre looking for areas of growth. Thatâs one key difference as I see. And the other difference I see is that with business there is a strong focus on existing solutions and business outcomes, but there is less focus on the customer point of view, right?
While as an innovation strategist you have the customer in the forefront of your mind. So, I think the focus is a bit different. Both want to achieve similar things. So you wanna drive the business forward, you want to grow, but in some cases in business consulting, you also go in the other direction where you want to cut costs and make something more efficient.
And thatâs also [00:06:00] something thatâs necessary and has its value. But for me itâs more exciting to create something new and achieve growth through that way.Â
Karthik: Amazing. Letâs move on to the highlight of this podcast, I would say BKK.
So do you want , to give the listeners an introduction of what BKK is and what this project means to Supercharge and you?Â
Viktor: Yeah, sure. Happy to. Yeah. Okay. So, Iâm going to say a few words about BKK itself. Then Iâm going to also talk about the the application.
So BKK, if you translate itâs an acronym, and it means that Center for Budapest Transport. And this is the organization thatâs responsible for coordinating the public transport within Budapest. So all of the buses, trams, metros all that kind of stuff, and they are also the one that, you know, examine the traveling patterns and needs of the travelers of the [00:07:00] people who are using public transport. And they are also the ones that are making sure that the quality of the vehicle is up to standards.
And their mission as BKK is really to make the city more sustainable. And for that, you need, you know, high-quality buses, you need a good network of public transport vehicles. So thatâs the physical part of that, but thereâs also a digital element to that. You need an application thatâs easy to use, and thatâs gonna make the usage of public transport easier, more comfortable.
And that is what Budapest GO is. So they used to have an application before that. It was called FutĂĄr, and that was already a proper application. But they wanted to take it to the next level. And thatâs when we redesigned and expanded the application.
And as of today, Budapest GO, so what it entails, itâs a public transportation app, so you can [00:08:00] get real time vehicle information. That means that you can check out that in any stop within Budapest when do buses, trams, and different modes of transport, when do they arrive. You can even do that now for trains and regional buses as well, which is really great for commuters, for example. You can also plan your journey, so you can find the best ways from A to B, just like with Google Maps, and you can also buy tickets and passes digitally. And you can also get traffic alerts, meaning that, you know, you can get notified right away if something happens, like if there is an accident or construction on the line that you are usually using.
So you can set up your preferences. So these are the core functionalities that the app has.Â
Karthik: Thatâs amazing. Yeah, I must say that since I came here, itâs been a delight to use the public transportation system. Iâve been to a couple of [00:09:00] other European cities and so far, I feel like Budapest is the best. So yeah. How did this project begin and what was the setup like?
Viktor: So if you go back a few years the public transport of Budapest was already at a really high quality, especially in terms of density. Like you could really get to any point of Budapest virtually with public transport and even if you had a night out you could get home easily, which is not necessarily a case in every city. So, for example, I was in Dublin in 2017, and there, if you had a night out, you couldnât really use public transport to get home.
So I think Budapest is really good at that and has been historically. But there was room for improvement in two areas.
So one of them is the quality of the vehicles, and the other is the digital services. And BKK [00:10:00] actually decided to focus on both of these issues.
If you look at the quality of vehicles, they have really improved throughout the years. I donât have the numbers, but they did a lot of procurements, and you can see that now the buses and trams are getting really nice.
And on the digital side, Budapest Go was the flagship project, and the aim was there to create a distinctive user experience. And so before Budapest Go came into existence the experience was quite fragmented.
So, if you wanted to have real-time vehicle information about bus arrivals, and if you wanted to do journey planning, then you needed to use FutĂĄr. So there was an app for that. Right. If you wanted to use digital ticketing, there was an app called Mobility Edge or you could also use OTP simple. And if you wanted to have traffic alerts, then you needed to use another app called BKK info, where you could have those.
[00:11:00] So there were three different apps, which are all essential for an average traveler who is using public transport. And they had different UX and UI. You need to download all three of them, register for all three of them. So it was, you know, thatâs annoying. Thatâs annoying. So, merging these and streamlining the functionality was a good starting point definitely. And this was a huge undertaking, so it involved multiple partners.
So, Supercharge did the design and front-end development. Real City was the one who did the real-time vehicle information and journey planning back-end, and the systems was the one who did the digital ticketing back-end and coordinated the project. And also from BKK, you know, a lot of peopleâs and other external partners.Â
Karthik: Thatâs amazing. A lot of nice groups coming together to build something really, really useful. I [00:12:00] mean, I cannot imagine the amount of happiness I would feel if I did this project and to see people actually use it. And itâs really useful.
I mean, it makes peopleâs lives much easier. And it goes back to the point at the start, when you said the outcome, tangible outcomes and the fact that you can actually see it, itâs something really rewarding.Â
Viktor: Yeah, it is. And you know, the fact that even your friends are using it and, you know, giving feedback that they like it, enjoy it.
So thatâs really a great feeling.Â
Karthik: So with all of these teams coming together, how did you manage to have the discovery phase and the research phase? It must have been like super huge with a lot of customer base. How do you tackle all this?Â
Viktor: Yeah, Iâm going to tell a bit about how do we usually tackle this kind of project at Supercharge.
So what was important here, and of course with any project, is [00:13:00] the alignment with business goals. And BKK already has a strategy in place. So, there is a document called BKK Strategy 2025. Okay. And there is also whatâs called the Budapest mobility plan. So there are some goals, you know, high-level goals that are determined there.
And, you know, whatever weâre building should be in alignment with those goals. So that was something we discussed early on in the discovery phase as well. And the discoveries that we do are usually led by our innovation consultants or product strategists. They are the ones who are organizing these workshops and focusing on different topics that need to be resolved in this strategic phase.
And so product searches and innovation consultants, manage the discovery, and they do high-level wireframes. So they do grayscale wireframes, right? They are pretty detailed wireframes, but [00:14:00] they donât do the colored, you know, pixel-perfect version. So this is when a handover happens to our UI designers, and they are the ones who are responsible for the aesthetic of the product.
So they are the ones who are actually creating the final pixel-perfect screens. And yeah, there is a reason behind this division. It might be, you know, strange because in a lot of cases, UX, UI is one role and we separated them out. But our experience at Supercharged was that managing the discovery, discussing these high-level questions, and creating the wireframes takes a bit different kind of skill set and then, then doing the UIs.
So, in the discovery and wireframing, the core skills are kind of like a structured way of thinking, being a bit analytical, understanding all of the factors at play, and what the client wants. Itâs also super important that you are a good communicator. Youâre able to [00:15:00] influence clients. You can convey your thoughts because a big part of the, you know, also design job and discovery job is convincing people and influencing people. So thatâs a key element. And the third key skill that our product strategists have is empathy. So, being able to empathize with the user and look at the word from their perspective.
And regarding UI what you really need is kind of like an artistic sense. Like a sense for beauty and being able to create nice screens. And itâs a bit different. Itâs similar, I think, like in software development back in the days, full stack development was quite common, but these days now they separate front and then back end.
And I see this division the same way. That you need a bit different skills in UX than UI. And even if you are a UX/UI designer, you probably have a stronger side. So you may be stronger in UX or maybe stronger in UI. [00:16:00]
Karthik: Yeah, yeah, I completely agree that itâs a different mindset and you basically need to have two people working if you are in the same role.
Viktor: I would also mention a few things about how we did user testing because I think that could be interesting. So, the scope was quite clear, and what we wanted to achieve in the first version. So, we were more curious about the usability. So, how the wireframes that we created, how usable they are. And we did actually user tests quite a lot.
So we did have 50 interviews overall and 10 per batch. And yeah, thatâs a lot. But we learned a lot actually from all of those and we incorporated all of their learnings into designs. And even though, you know, these were in-depth qualitative interviews. So we were focusing on understanding, you know, whatâs the experience like for the users. And [00:17:00] also we did ask questions about their existing habits and anxieties and pain points. So there were some element of exploratory questions as well.
So it was kind of like a combination of exploratory and usability tests. And, you know, the point of this test is not statistical significance. So itâs not a quantitative test, but we still try to have people with diverse backgrounds because the appâs target audience is so large. So we wanted to have people with different perspectives. So we did have people who were younger, who were older. We did have people who have used digital ticketing before and who only use paper ticketing.
We also had people who lived in the suburbs and people who lived in the city. So this way you could get a, you know, diverse mix of perspectives so that was really good. And as I mentioned, we, did this with the wireframes. So these are grayscale wireframes.
And I think [00:18:00] there is a benefit to doing this test with wireframes because on the one hand, itâs easier to do, so less effort for designers to put together the wireframes and do the testing. And youâre also more willing to change the wireframe because it took less effort to put them together. You are not as emotionally attached. If you have, you know, these colorful, shiny screens, then itâs kind of harder to change. So thatâs one benefit.
The other benefit I see with this is that people are more willing to criticize and view they are or share their opinions about the screens. If they look less ready, because you know, they see that this is just a mock-up. While if youâre showing a pixel perfect UI, it feels really like the actual product. So thatâs why we like to do this when it comes to functionality. Of course, In some cases, it makes sense to do it with the UIs, and, [00:19:00] if you want to also test the aesthetics, then sure, letâs do it, or the brand, but if youâre interested in functionality, if they are able to find the buttons that you want, if they are understanding the copies, if they, you know, can go through the flow, I think itâs good to do it with wireframes.
Karthik: Yeah, I agree. I totally agree, but one key point I would like to add to this is that: itâs always good to mention that to people, whoever youâre testing it with, that these are mockups and wireframes. These are not final designs.
Because some folks, they just have initial comments of. âWhat is this design?â But yeah, itâs always good to mention, and I completely agree that itâs easier to modify. I use Axure a lot. Axure is a prototyping tool and we usually test with that, and itâs [00:20:00] a HTML rendering prototype so people can actually type names dates and all these things. So when you actually test these functionalities, they have predefined widgets, so it doesnât take a lot of effort, like you said. And when people find it difficult to do it, you kind of modify or have two different versions and do an A/B test or things like that.
So itâs Yeah, I completely agree that it takes less effort and the reward is more.Â
Viktor: Yeah. And of course these prototypes have limitations, so they cannot access the full functionality. And also itâs, you know, not shiny, not colorful, but still they are close enough to reality that people can imagine what it would be like.
And also you can see the confusion if something is not designed properly, so itâs enough to give youâŚ,Â
Karthik: And plus like 50 interviews. I think itâs quite a lot. I think youâll get a lot of nice insights from that. I was just curious [00:21:00] were the folks that you were testing, were they existing FutĂĄr users or new people, like new users?Â
Viktor: So some of them were, some of them not. So we try to mix it up. And also the number of interviews, I would say that depends on the project. So like, on the one hand, the feature set, which was also large in case of Budapest Go and also the target audience was pretty broad. So thatâs why we did this many.
With a smaller product, like if youâre building a product for a startup, you shouldnât do that many interviews because it doesnât make sense. I think you always need to assess like how many features you have and also, you know, whatâs the target audience.Â
Karthik: Yeah, I agree.
And what did you learn from⌠what are the major learnings from these user interviews?Â
Viktor: Yeah, there were some interesting learnings, thatâs for sure. So. What was interesting to see that you know, people have a lot of anxieties when it comes to public [00:22:00] transport.
So, they are worried that, you know, they are not going to make the connection. The bus is not going to come on time. Itâs going to be dirty. So thereâs all kinds of anxieties, which is understandable because Public transport is not as predictable as your own car. You know what to expect when you are getting in your own car, but when you use public transports, thatâs a different story.
It was also interesting to see that in some crucial moments, even one click can be too many. So Iâll give you an example. We have this digital ticketing system, where you need to actually, where you need to scan the Stickers on the side of the vehicles. Yeah, that was something that has been existing before even Budapest Go. But it was interesting to see that, you know, thatâs a crucial moment for users and customers because when the bus is coming you need to pull out your phone and point it to the door and people, you know worry that they are not going to be able to [00:23:00] do it. And one or two click is too many, and we really made sure that that crucial flow is really streamlined.
And the way we did it is we created a widget, and from there, basically, with one tap, you can activate this feature. But if you need to go to the app, select the ticket section, then then click on the read, thatâs a bit too much because in that crucial moment, you know, people might be on their phone, in the station, they are checking out TikTok or whatever. And then. âOh, the bus is coming!â You need to quickly pull up your phone. So thatâs why itâs a really crucial flow. So this was also interesting to see.
Another interesting part for me was that many people fear cycling. So people like cycling for a hobby. So they do it on a weekend, but they donât do it for transport. And you know, often the reason is that they are scared of cars, rightfully so, because, [00:24:00] you know, itâs, itâs not pleasant to to cycle next to cars. And thatâs, you know, true in some cases that youâre cycling next to cars, but Budapest has also more and more bicycle paths, so thereâs definitely an improvement in that area. But a lot of people donât know, like, where the cycle routes are and what kind of cycle routes to expect, so is it you know, fully separated bicycle path, is it kind of like a marked bicycle path on the road, or is it just, you know, there is no bicycle path, just a road.
Yeah. And this is not something you can look in, for example, in Google Maps. So if you plan a bike journey in Google Maps, youâre gonna get a recommendation, but you donât know what kind of cycling paths youâre gonna ride on. Yeah. And that was one of the things that was also holding back people from taking their bikes because they donât know what kind of routes they should expect if they go to their friends or if they go to a new place, to a bar.
And that was really [00:25:00] what provided the foundation for a feature that we introduced later on, which is the advanced bike routing feature, which is essentially doing just that. Like, if you plan a route, you can see what kind of⌠what type of bike roads are going to be there.Â
Karthik: Oh, wow. Iâve never used this.
Okay. I need to check it out. Because I always associated Budapest GO with just trams and buses. So I never knew this existed.Â
Viktor: Yeah, itâs there. Itâs there. When you plan a journey, there is a settings button where you can find this.Â
Karthik: Oh, wow. Okay. Iâm going to use this because I need this. Yeah, Iâve had a couple of, and my friend also had recently a situation where he was literally 10 meters away from a bus and just most probably getting hit by a bus while he was biking.
So it was a bit scary situation when he mentioned it. Yeah. So yeah, these things are useful to know.[00:26:00] I was just curious how do you observe these? Because thereâs something that I spoke with, yeah, Lisa in the first podcast that we had about how do you design for a modern work environment, which basically means how do you design for somebody who has, letâs say, multiple tabs open or letâs say who is watching tik-tok and wants to get on a tram?
Like you said, how do you design for such use cases?
And thereâs something very interesting, and Iâm glad that you mentioned this because I feel like we need to account a lot of these factors while designing an application right now people are rushing to get into a tram and they need to open the phone app , two tabs and all these things.
So this makes total sense that you came up with this feature of a widget. So thatâs amazing. Yeah. So thatâs proper case study there.Â
Viktor: Yeah. Well, what you can do there is make it really obvious and make it really short. [00:27:00] I think people read a lot less than we imagine. Also, as designers, we tend to, you know, really Fine tune every copy we have, but in reality people really skim through screens and just read the highlights.
Usually, if you have a subtext or a smaller text, that really rarely gets read by users.Â
Karthik: So yeah, I think this is where like you mentioned the UI skills or the aesthetic skills also come into place and itâs a different mindset. Were there any other challenges while working on this project?
Viktor: Yeah, yeah, there were definitely some since the app has quite a large target audience. Itâs challenging to please everyone because, you know, there are so many different types of people that use the app, you know, some of the people are different. Avid public transport users. So they use public transport actively.
Some of them are even experts. Like there are some people who are really into public transport. They know all the vehicle [00:28:00] types and they do have Facebook groups, where they share all of the info and they are very vocal about their needs. And I think we can get good ideas from them. But whatâs challenging is that their needs and requirements are a bit different than the average users, so they require more advanced features.
But at the end of the day, I think Budapest GOâs main goal was to attract as many people as possible for public transport. So what we did there is we always kind of represented the average user. We wanted to make the experience good for the average user, and the average user doesnât care about, you know, the vehicle types or the different lines.
You just want to get from A to B as fast as possible with minimal disruption. So for most of us, transport is a necessity. Itâs not something you do out of enjoyment. And that was, that was interesting, challenging to navigate because youâll need to, you know, youâll [00:29:00] need to make Iâm not saying all, all of the people happy, but most, because you cannot say that youâre just focusing on this segment because this is a public entity, you know, and public transport is for everyone.
So you cannot say, okay, Iâm just going to focus on this niche. We need to kind of cater to everyone. So that was one of the challenges. And the other one is something I already hinted. So, there is some pre-existing physical structure that we need to accommodate. So, for example, this digital scanning of the stickers on the side of the buses.
So thatâs how digital passes and tickets work in Budapest. And, you know, some people have criticized this, that this is a bit too cumbersome, which is, which critic has some merit, but this is not something we can change on the short term. So, we need to work with that and we need to find a way to make the best of this.
And I think we managed to introduce some [00:30:00] innovations that, you know, made this whole digital ticketing process easier. So that was another one. Another challenge is that in terms of public transport apps, there is, you know, also now international competition. So thereâs Google Maps, which is pretty good.
Itâs really good, especially when it comes to journey planning. And of course, these applications are good because these companies have top talent. They have, you know, vast budgets, which a lot of resources, a lot of resources. Yeah, which is not something that public entities have. So, itâs hard to compete with them.
But on the bright side, BKK has a lot of, you know, really great experts and a lot of accumulated knowledge about how people travel here in Budapest and what are their preferences. So I think that led to some really great features that you cannot find in Google Maps. For example, this bike route[00:31:00] feature, advanced bike route planning feature.
And the other one I really like, I donât know if youâve used that one, is the planning from vehicle, which means that you know, if you plan your route and you want to check if thatâs still the best route when youâre on the vehicle, then, for example, Google Maps doesnât take into consideration that youâre on the vehicle, so itâs going to plan from point A to point B. And with this, you can actually mark that you are on a specific vehicle, and it will show, you know, the journey time and the elements from there. So this is a good one. So you can, you can always double check if still the one that you selected the best plan.
So thatâs, thatâs a cool feature. And maybe one other thing I would mention, there are also some regulatory issues that can come into play. Yeah, I was curious about that. Yeah, [00:32:00] I can give you a small example. For example, if you want to change the name of certain ticket types, because maybe historically they have been called something thatâs not so clear what it means.
In some cases, you need to have ministry-level approval. For example, if the ticket is valid for a line thatâs operated by VLAN and not BKK, then you need ministry-level approval, which you know, not not an easy thing to get. But you can work around these issues. You can add, you know, additional information boxes and circumvent these issues.
But these pose interesting challenges, you know, you canât change this, everything like, like this. Sometimes you need to have approvals and itâs not so easy to get, or you cannot even get it.Â
Karthik: So what were some of the major features compared to the predecessor Futar and like, what were the, why were they introduced?
[00:33:00]
Viktor: Yeah, so. A big new feature was digital ticketing and digital passes. So that was a big step forward because thatâs not something that FutĂĄr was capable of. But what I think really made the experience even better are some added comfort features that we included.
And I can give you some examples there. So, for example, if you buy a monthly pass or any kind of pass, then you will get a reminder before itâs expired. And you can also have a monthly pass subscription, which means that itâs going to automatically renew your pass at the end of the month, which is also a nice comfort feature.
And widget. We already talked about and these all make the kind of like the digital ticketing experience better and they improve it and they kind of draw people towards it because these are features that you cannot get in the [00:34:00] physical world, right? So, no one is going to let you know that your pass is going to expire.
But in the digital world, we can do that. And even though you need to scan this code on the sides of the vehicles, there are these comfort features that make the experience better. So thatâs an interesting one. We also changed the structure of route planning, so how the results are displayed, so people can find easier the best route for themselves.
There is also the advanced bike routing feature we already talked about. And we also kept a lot of features from FUTAR and slightly improved upon them, and I think itâs important to acknowledge that it already had some great features. And you know, when you redesign an app, you donât have to redesign everything, so if something was working well, then thereâs no reason to change it, so I think thatâs important.
Karthik: Thatâs a key thing to keep in mind, yeah. Not just redesign the whole thing and frustrate the [00:35:00] users.Â
Viktor: Yeah, thatâs also important that, you know, we changed the experience, but also kept some elements of it. So people, you know, they are not seeing something entirely new because that can be frustrating.
So if nothing is familiar in an app thatâs used by a lot of people that can really enrage people. So I think it was important to keep some elements. And like I said, they were working well, so there was no reason to change them.Â
Karthik: And how was this new change received? I mean, Iâm assuming that it was a big change for the users.
How was it received? Did you have any analytics or research done there or testing?Â
Viktor: Yeah, so from what I gather, the majority of users liked it. So we, of course monitored, you know, Google reviews and what people said on social media and other places. BKK also has some service that investigates the satisfaction of [00:36:00] users.
So I think they like it. But regarding analytics, I think the numbers tell you all that. Within one year there have been 2.2 million downloads and one million monthly active users.
Karthik: Thatâs amazing.
Viktor: So I think thatâs a lot. Thatâs a good testament of that the app provides value for the people. Yeah. We also have won an IF design award with it. Thatâs also something Iâm proud of.Â
Karthik: Congratulations for that. Yeah. Thank you. I was so happy to see that.Â
Viktor: Yeah, so, of course, there were some improvements that were needed. There were some initial stuff. For example, it was interesting to learn, and this goes back to what I mentioned, one extra click can matter a lot.
So, we do have that feature with tickets and passes that you can show your code to an inspector staff. I donât know if you know that feature. Initially, when we released this, this was in the [00:37:00] details of the ticket, so you needed to tap twice to access this, and that was annoying for some people, and they wanted to have it on the ticket itself.
So right now we replaced it to the top right so you can access it with one click and thatâs again an example like how one click can be too much in some context. And to be honest, it was also annoying me as a user because whenever I got off the metro and I heard that, you know, there are going to be inspection staff at the exit, I needed to double click to access that feature and it was loading.
So Iâm happy that we changed that. And there are some other key points that still need to be addressed. So one of the big one is that the block of 10 tickets is not available, which have a discounted price if you buy it on machine or in a âkasszaâ. And the other one is the Apple Pay and Google Pay.
So thatâs not available [00:38:00] and these are well known issues. So we also know about them. BKK knows about it, but they do largely depend on external partners, but Iâm hopeful that theyâre going to be resolved in the near future. Â
Karthik: What was the launch like, and do you have any learnings? You already mentioned some, but what was the launch like?Â
Viktor: Yeah, thatâs, it was definitely a unique launch.
It was a really, really public one. You know, BKK put out a lot of ads in the stations. You know, you could see them hinting about these new ads. And there was also an official, official event organized by BKK, where the CEO of BKK spoke about this, you know, new app. There was also the media.
So thatâs amazing. So this was a really big public launch, which of course puts some stress on us. But fortunately, the launch went well. So, the app was well received. Yeah, there were some minor bugs which have been [00:39:00] fixed since then. So overall, I think it went great. Yeah. Maybe one other interesting learning from the analytics, and this is something we also addressed, is that you know, people were scanning their monthly pass all the time, which they shouldnât have to because a monthly pass is analogous to a physical pass. So you should only take out your phone and scan a sticker if youâre onboarding a front door-only vehicle where the driver checks your pass or if youâre entering a metro station where thereâs the ticket inspection staff.
So thatâs, thatâs the two use cases when you need to scan a monthly pass. But people were scanning it even if they onboarded a tram where there was no inspection staff, which didnât make sense. And, of course, it bothered them. Like why do I need to scan this?
And they didnât know that they didnât have to. And of course, itâs not their fault. So itâs not the users fault. We needed to do a better job of telling [00:40:00] people when to use the tickets. So thereâs this element of education. And what we did there? So, if you now open the app, maybe you have seen it, that there is this kind of information bar on top of tickets that tells you when you should scan that certain ticket type. So, depending on whether you have a monthly pass or single ticket or time-based, that now helps people to understand this, and there is no one⌠thereâs less unnecessary scanning.Â
Karthik: Absolutely. These little nudges definitely help. Yeah.
And letâs, letâs talk about the new or the recent feature, letâs say, about the NFC that was rolled out, I think, three-four weeks back. How did this start? And, what was the reason? And how is it?Â
Viktor: Mm hmm. Yeah, so. As I mentioned, and we discussed that, you know, when the bus is arriving and you need to scan the [00:41:00] sticker, thatâs kind of a crucial moment, and itâs a moment that causes some anxiety for people. And we wanted to reduce the friction there. And pointing the camera has been, you know, a pain point, so we thought that an easier way to do this would be just tapping your phone against the sticker, which is like a similar interaction. You also do this form when, when you pay, for example, in a shop. So, the idea was there to streamline a bit that experience, the scanning experience, provide an alternative that might be easier for people. And that was really the motivation for doing that.
And yeah, that was an interesting feature to design because there werenât really a lot of screens that we needed to design. It was rather about the logic, like how it would work because there are a lot of different ticket types that you can buy in Budapest Go. And we [00:42:00] we wanted to automate the experience as much as possible.
So, if you tap against the sticker, we wanted to make sure that it automatically validates the ticket that makes sense in that scenario, but sometimes you need to make a choice as a user. So if you have two different ticket types, letâs say a single ticket and a 30-minute ticket, then we donât know which one you want to use.
So you need to indicate that. But we wanted to automate the experience as much as possible, and it was an interesting exercise to think through all of the use cases and edge cases. So, yeah, that was a challenge.Â
Karthik: Yeah yeah, speaking right from the start about this project and eventually talking about this feels like a proper exercise that was done well.
Yeah, because you mentioned about the pain points of having to scan, the anxieties and the fact that you provided an alternative solution. Itâs amazing. And a couple [00:43:00] of folks from UX Studio use this, and they were super happy about this. So yeah, thatâs a really good feature, I would say.
Viktor: Glad to hear.
Karhtik: Yeah. I mean, theyâre, theyâre happy about it.
This leads me to our next set of questions about innovation and how we can incorporate as designers this mindset of innovation and strategic thinking. And like we mentioned, to break an ecosystem or to break an industry standard.
Viktor: Yes. So, I think that the best way to start is always with the users, you know, understanding what are some pain points. You know, we already discussed user research. You can understand a lot about their context, and I think whatâs important about the user test is that youâre looking for problems to solve, but youâre not expecting the solution from the people youâre testing with.
They [00:44:00] might have ideas how to solve it, but If youâre brainstorming as a designer, you probably can can come up with something better because thatâs your job. Yeah. And so, we shouldnât expect users to provide us with the solution. And I think thatâs an important one, like immersing yourself in the world of the user and what are their pain points.
âWhatâs important about the user test is that youâre looking for problems to solve, but youâre not expecting the solution from the people youâre testing with. They might have ideas how to solve it, but If youâre brainstorming as a designer, you probably can come up with something better because thatâs your job.â
And the other one I think is important, is benchmarking and seeing what others do because in a lot of cases, innovation is not something completely brand new. Itâs something, an idea that may be repurposed from one domain to another. And I think itâs always good to benchmark. But people, I think people often benchmark too narrowly just within the industry or the same category of the app.
I would encourage people to do it a bit wider. So look at adjacent industries or even seemingly distinct industries. They might have similar solutions because there you might find [00:45:00] analogies or solutions that can be applied in your context as well. And if you think about it, like innovation is really often the import-export of ideasâŚ.
So. Letâs take an example. For example, thereâs Uber which launched back then. And, you know, it inspired a lot of other startups with the similar business model and the business logic. Thereâs TaskRabbit or Instacart, which do operate on the same business model.
So like, solutions in one area can be repurposed in another. The important thing there is to think about how your challenge and how your customers are different than the one where youâre getting the original idea from, so you might need to fine-tune it, tweak it. Not just copy blindlessly. But I think thatâs important to look at why. And for example, sometimes I donât know if you know the website Marvin. Thatâs a great website. Sometimes I just look at their [00:46:00] new apps. What do they do? Like what kind of features do they have?
What kind of solutions do they have? Like randomly. So Iâm not specifically focusing on anything, but if it gives you some good ideas, âokay, this is an interesting solutionâ, it might be, you know, it might be a pharmaceutical app or whatever, but still you can, you can connect it to your challenge or to your app.
Karthik: Absolutely. Yeah, I completely agree. And I also kind of think in a way that a lot of people think innovation means something completely new. I feel like thereâs nothing completely new in this world. Everything is repurposed information, one way or the other. Even dating back to the ancient times. So itâs all repurposed, but the way that you can use it to your own domain and your own audience makes more sense.
The points that you mentioned and also the other points of even cultural differences. For example, Uber can [00:47:00] work in US, but might not work in China. So Yeah. You can repurpose that in a way where you can address for the local market. So yeah, thatâs also innovation I feel.Â
Viktor: Yeah. Look at WeChat: itâ completely different approach from what we have in Europe. So it basically includes so many features, but here in Europe, we do have specialized apps. Even though some companies are now trying to build super apps. But Iâm not sure if that model is gonna work here.
Iâm curious to see.Â
Karthik: Yeah. Hyper-local and e-commerce within communications kind of work and mostly in Eastern markets. Because I think the mindset is that I want to use a lot of things in one app and yeah, just squeeze out everything within one thing. I think thatâs the mindset there and specializations or having special apps for special purposes I think itâs much [00:48:00] more Western, which is fine. And I think to address that market and mindset is the key.
Yeah. This brings me to the next question of what is the value of business knowledge for designers? Because innovation requires understanding the business aspect as well. So what value does it bring to designers?
Viktor: Yeah. I believe that it can help you greatly if youâre a designer, because if youâre, letâs assume you are a UX/UI designer, and I think thatâs a profession thatâs getting more popular as well, but also becoming more and more commoditized, like itâs something that there are a lot of good designers out there. They can create really nice looking screens and screens that are user friendly, and thatâs, thatâs becoming more and more common.
But if youâre building on top of that some business knowledge, and youâre able to think with the head of business stakeholders, I think [00:49:00] thatâs a way to differentiate yourself and, and position yourself above the pack. And once you have that skill set, once you kind of understand that way of thinking and how business people also speak or high-level stakeholders, how they think, then youâre able to influence them.
And that can be really important from the perspective of your product, because if you think about it, like everything is downstream from the strategic decisions. So whatever gets decided at the top, itâs going to affect you, and you might not like it. And if youâre not able to contribute or influence these decisions, then youâre always at the whim of those people.
So I believe thatâs why itâs a really useful skill to have. And especially now. In these times when the economy is a bit slower. Businesses are even more careful what they invest money in and also when it comes to their product. [00:50:00] So youâll need to be really able to articulate whatâs going to be the value, the business benefits that this new feature is going to provide. Itâs not enough in itself to say that itâs going to be good for the users.
Letâs say you want to introduce a gamification element to your loyalty program, then youâll, youâll need to be able to express how this gonna, you know, generate more sales, how this gonna increase cross-selling, how this gonna, you know, increase brand reputation.
So you, youâll need to be able to think in those terms. I think thatâs important.Â
Karthik: Absolutely. And Yeah, as an agency, at least I think itâs good to be more of a consultant rather than just a designer because essentially youâre negotiating with the stakeholders in a way, and itâs always good to be on the good side or the winning side, even if it means sacrificing a bit of time or certain resources.
I [00:51:00] think itâs good. But my next question is, how does one improve their business acumen or knowledge?Â
Viktor: Yeah, so the good news is that the basic concepts can be, I think, easily learned. A lot of businesses Iâm not saying itâs common sense, but itâs something that you know, itâs not hard to read. Itâs not like learning coding. I think these concepts and frameworks are relatively easy to learn.
I mentioned that I love stories and case studies, and for me, those work well. If you are a designer, I think you could focus on business design, which is kind of like an emerging discipline that is at the kind of like the cross-section of business and design.
It basically means that you apply design frameworks and tools for business problems and challenges. If you want to read about that, there is a site that has a really good kind of summary. Itâs called d.mba Thereâs a good summary [00:52:00] and there are also some great readings that are recommended.
If you like to read, there are some classic books you can read, like the Lean Startup, the Blue Russian Strategy, Innovatorâs Dilemma. I think these are all, all great books. I also like a site called Four Week MBA, and they have examples of real life companies and their business models, and they explain in great detail how they work.
Thatâs nice, yeah. Thatâs also a good one. I mentioned earlier that I like Harvard Business Review. They also get good Case Studies and Y-Combinator videos. Yeah, I personally like this kind of like story based learning.Â
Karthik: Yeah, I think itâs easier to relate and apply as well. To the listeners, I think weâll link all these amazing sites and articles in the description.
Viktor, my next question is, how can you benefit from your design background when discussing business-related questions?Â
Viktor: Yeah, [00:53:00] it might be frightening at first you know, to learn business, especially if you have met maybe business consultants with their suits and with their MBAs and with their strong educational background.
But like I said, I think the basics can be learned fairly rapidly, and I think as a designer, you do have an advantage, and thatâs becauseâŚ. so one of the things I think business schools and business thinking tend to miss is basically this: they focus on business outcomes and operations, but the customer is less in the focus.
And as a designer, like, thinking about the customer, empathizing with them is second nature to you. So thatâs one adventure. Because, you know, these days, every company must be, you know, user centric if they want to survive and succeed. And the other one I observed in business thinking is that you often [00:54:00] focused on existing solutions and reusing existing solution, but they donât, they donât want to deviate from what has worked so far.
And since they are not focusing on the customer, they are not thinking creatively as much. And as a designers, you can really focus on customer problems and understand pain points, context, and you can bring, I think, more creative solutions by applying this kind of design thinking mindset and really understanding the problem and coming up with something new rather than, you know, just looking at the next benchmark.
So I think those are two advantages that you can have as designer. And, you know, if you inject these, these kind of design tools into the business thinking, thatâs something, thatâs quite powerful, and itâs different from what business consultants do.
So itâs a, I would say itâs a good way of differentiation.
Karthik: [00:55:00] Itâs a powerful alchemy. Yeah, I agree. So, yeah, those were my questions for you. I have to be honest. This was completely useful. I really learned about the whole process and the way you approach a problem.
And I also learned about business and design and how these two can be a powerful combination. So yeah, thank you so much, Victor, for joining us. Itâs been a pleasure.Â
Viktor: Thank you for the invitation. Itâs been great Cheers
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