HSL and Solita have revamped the popular Journey Planner based on passenger needs.
HSL Helsinki Region Transport provides more than one million journeys per day in the Helsinki area. The Journey Planner serves customers when they want to find the easiest way to reach their destination using public transport. The service is available online at HSL.fi and in the HSL application.
Serves 1.7 million customers
2.6 million route searches per month
Since 2011, Solita has been developing the Journey Planner customer experience with HSL. The latest update was made in 2019–2021, when the entire user interface was renewed based on the needs of passengers.
The revamp seamlessly integrated the popular Journey Planner, previously a separate service, with HSL.fi.
HSL wanted to provide its customers with a one-stop shop for all services. In the future, customers only need to know one address that provides all the information and services related to transport.
Journey Planner’s user groups and their knowledge of public transport vary considerably, creating challenges for understanding the public transport system and user friendliness of the service.
To provide in-depth understanding of each transport event from the perspective of different passengers, the design process was divided into four stages.
Understanding the public transport system
Predictive journey planning
Instantaneous journey planning
Support during the journey
During the design phase, hundreds of passengers were involved using various methods: quantitative surveys, individual interviews and quick street surveys. At the beginning of each phase, we focused on gaining a deep insight into the needs, followed by developing prototype solutions and validating them.
With popular services like the Journey Planner, one of the biggest challenges is to motivate users to adopt new functions.
Nearby stop-specific timetables and vehicles are now just one click away.
The Nearby stops and routes section provides the most convenient way to see which means of transport you should use for a familiar route.
It was particularly challenging and interesting to create both an understandable user experience for first-time users and a smooth user experience for the service’s daily users.
Based on the duration of the journey and weather information, a passenger can decide if cycling or walking is the best option.
A new option is to combine cycling with public transport.
The Journey Planner is our most important service for our customers’ everyday needs, and it has a direct impact on the attractiveness of public transport.
HSL.fi was awarded for Best Online Service in the Grand One, the largest Finnish competition for digital marketing communications.
We have designed Finnish online services as a team for more than a decade, supplementing each other’s expertise.
In recent years, we have mostly been designing HSL’s digital services. Promoting more fluent public transport through digital services is a matter of honour for us both.
