Mobile ticketing solutions are proposed as an alternative to the OV-chipkaart in a vision created by the Nationaal Openbaar Vervoer Beraad (NOVB), a council consisting of public transport companies, local governments and consumer organisations. By taking a user-centred approach, a design vision was developed for mobile ticketing in Dutch public transport.

An in-depth field study was conducted of the solutions available in Oslo, London and Seoul, focussing on the factors influencing the adoption rate and traveller experience. This identified factors influencing adoption, which served as the foundation for the proposed guidelines for a successful implementation of mobile ticketing solutions in the Netherlands.

By conducting user and stakeholder interviews and evaluations, discussing working principles, developed ideas and concepts, the following design principles have been identified for a user-centred mobile ticketing solution in Dutch public transport.

Efficient onboarding process - provide a set-up process that travellers are able to conduct on the go.

Accessible, immediate travel - allow for immediate travel through a virtual mobile OV-chipkaart without high financial barriers.

Dynamic interface, adaptive per phase - adapt to the traveller’s journey by providing context dependent information, such as arrival times.

Provide the right information at the right time - Unburden travellers from uncertainty by pro-actively providing them with important contextual information.

Mix Matters - Provide clear distinguishable alternatives as travellers can have different preferences for fare media.

Independence from location-bound machines - Make sure that a mobile ticketing solution can operate independently from these location-bound machines. (e.g. mobile top up)

Using these design principles, a customer journey and proposed design was made and a first prototype of the OV-betalen app was created. In order to comply to the established design principles, the OV-betalen app moves away from card-stored data and moves the data stored on the current OV-chipkaart to the backend.

Evaluating this prototype with users has revealed that this proposed design was rated on average as ‘Best imaginable’ on the System Usability Scale (Bangor et al., 2009). Participants also indicated that they hope that the evaluated app becomes reality. This report shows the process towards this proposed design vision and also elaborates on an implementation strategy for further development.