First Rail

Native apps for Britain’s largest rail operator

First Rail is one of the largest rail operators in the UK, carrying more than 750,000 passenger daily.

I worked with Future Platforms to redesign the iOS app for several of the operators owned by First Rail. For this case study I will show work done for South Western Rail.

Alongside the UX/UI design, there was also a requirement to create a design system that could be shared across the different operators.

  • Project type

    iOS app

  • Industry

    Transport

  • Role

    Senior UX/UI

  • Date

    2018 - 2019

What I did

UX Design
iOS Design
Design system

Customer journey updates

Journey planning

Users would often book tickets in a hurry, so this process was designed to be more efficient by reducing the number of clicks and displaying as much information as possible on the screen.

Ticket purchase

The goal here was to help users to find, select and purchase a ticket for their journey in as few steps as possible. After purchase, a ticket was loaded into a digital wallet.

Live train times

The live times feature helps users find departing and arriving trains at a station of their choice. I went through several iterations to find the optimal way to present information.

Customer account updates

Sign in + register

This flow was redesigned to help improve the sign in and registration experience. Users are able to sign into their account or create a new one with greater speed and ease.

Season ticket flow

Users are able to purchase season tickets on the go and add them to their account for use when travelling.

Smart card purchase flow

The smart card purchasing journey was redesigned to help users find, purchase and add smart cards to their digital wallet on the go.

Creating a design system

I created a Design System that would be shared accross First Rail's other train operators, such as Great Western Rail and Transpennine Express.

The design system included typography, colours, buttons, components and accessibility guidelines.

Business impact

App store ratings

After the release of the newly designed app, we observed an increase in the iOS app store from an average of 2 stars to 4.5 stars

CSAT increase

After the release of the newly designed app, we observed an increase in the overall customer satisfaction rating of the app at around 70%

Outcomes & thoughts

I enjoyed working on this project and learned a lot about native iOS design, building re-usable components and creating design systems in Figma.

I felt one of the biggest challenges was that the client did not allocate enough time or budget for user research in the early stages of the project.