Recap

I suggest reading my previous article below to understand this project as I would be making references to it.

For a while now, transportation in Lagos has been at the top of my mind. I wanted to work on something that could make the process of taking public transit in Lagos simple and efficient through design thinking. I made an attempt once but couldn't complete it at that time due to some reasons.

From the research I conducted previously, the main issues public transit users in Lagos have are related to -  Traffic, Little or no transit information, Waiting/queueing for buses, Paying for fares, and High inconvenience.

Based on this, I tried matching these problems to a number of proposed solutions and even went as far as trying to imagine a better bus service that could fit and work well for the city and citizens. I also drafted out a list of features for a transit app and had plans of designing it.

After struggling at different attempts in writing the third and last part, I knew something was wrong. It felt like a case study at best and wasn't very realistic because what I was designing even though was futuristic didn't feel right as it required me making a lot of assumptions that the government would make a significant infrastructural change in the transportation sector in the nearest future but knowing how they operate, I felt I was wasting my time.

Aside from that, there are too many factors and scenarios involved because there are different categories of people who use public transit in Lagos and also commute for different reasons. This might make it hard to proffer solutions to cater to everyone's need (not impossible to achieve) but my main concern remains that this is a very big problem that shouldn't just end in a case study and if I was really going to attempt solving it, then I should try to at least make it realistic even if I don't follow through to building it. 

The real question became - What can be done about this NOW?

To answer this question, I knew it was really important for me to de-risk the solution so I decided to go back to the drawing board to properly analyze the current system, available resources, rethink the whole experience and execute with a different approach to achieve a more workable solution. This whole thing eventually morphed into a different idea.

Redefining my goal

My goal which was to create a better experience for an average Lagos commuter didn't change but upgraded instead. 

My high-level goals became : 

• Make it easy, fast, convenient, and affordable to move around Lagos without depending on the government to improve public transportation.
• Capture the whole experience from end-to-end and not just focusing on the commuters alone but also putting those who are driving into consideration.
• Design the solution as though I had the capital to build it by thinking of a business case with the right strategy so anyone with the right resources could build on it.

Coming soon.