WebApp for Indian Railways' Circular Journey
This is a hypothetical project created as part of a job interview for the Product Designer role at Livspace. The goal of this project was to design a web application that simplifies the process of booking Indian Railways' Circular Journey tickets.
My Role
Product Designer
Timeline
5 Days
Skills / Tools
UXD, Prototyping, Figma
Problem Statement
The current process of booking Circular Journey tickets on Indian Railways is complicated, manual, and time consuming. It involves a multi-layered ticket approval process, queuing at the station to collect the ticket, and no guarantee of seat confirmation. As a result, users find it challenging to book Circular Journey tickets, and there is a need for a simple, hassle-free, and digital solution.
Understanding of the current process
After checking Indian Railways website, I watched a few YouTube videos on how circular journey tickets are booked. The current process of booking circular journey tickets involves planning an itinerary and taking it to the Divisional Commercial Manager of the respective city station. After checking the itinerary and identity proof, the DRM gives a form that has to be filled out and submitted to the Station Master. The station master approves the journey and issues a temporary ticket. Then the temporary ticket has to be submitted to the reservation counter, pay the amount, and collect the journey ticket. This whole process may take 2 to 5 days depending on the availability of the appointed government officers. Even after this hassle, one cannot get confirmed tickets.
Personas
From the research, I identified two personas
Arjun N.
Demographics - 26yrs, lives in Mumbai, works as a developer, loves landscape photography and travelling
Behaviour - Tech-savvy, traveller, typically travels in groups, plans photography trips every alternate month, looking for discounts
Goals - Don’t have time to visit railway station for ticket bookings, makes customised itineraries season-wise, need to book multiple train tickets in a minimum amount of time
Deepti M.
Demographics - 38yrs, lives in Delhi, works as
a travel and food blogger
Behaviour - Pricing is a big issue since by profession she needs to travel a lot, mostly travels solo, twice a year takes longer family trips
Goals - Always preplans trips well in advance, need to customise the journey according to the plan
Pain Points
In today’s digital world, the current process of planning Indian Railways’ circular journey is a tedious and time-consuming process. These are major pain points:
A multi-layered ticket approval process
Manual and complicated booking process
Queuing at the station
to collect the ticket
Need for seat
confirmation
Insights
Based on the personas and research, I concluded that users want to book Circular Journey tickets easily and quickly from anywhere. They want to customise routes as per their itineraries, be able to do group bookings, save travel costs, and have confirmed tickets before they board trains.
The features
of web app include
