Ferry Mobility · 2019
Booking for people who do it twice a year
A regional operator moving from ticket counters to an app, with a passenger base that had never used one. Designing for infrequency is a different problem to designing for power users.
- 41% → 73%
- Mobile booking completion
- 3
- Releases to get there
- 1st
- Accessibility audit in company history
The situation
Ferry's passengers book two or three times a year, often on a phone they are not comfortable with, frequently outdoors and in a hurry. The first digital booking flow had been designed by copying a low-cost airline. It failed for exactly the people it needed to serve.
What we did
- 01
We designed for the worst realistic conditions
Bright daylight, one thumb, a bag in the other hand, a two-minute window before departure. Every decision was checked against that scenario rather than against a desk.
- 02
We removed the account wall
Booking no longer required signing up. Account creation moved to after payment, as an option, with the booking already secured. That single change accounted for most of the first completion jump.
- 03
We made the ticket work offline
Rural routes lose signal. The ticket became a locally stored artefact with a visible validity state, so nobody had to explain themselves to a conductor.
- 04
We ran a real accessibility audit
External, with screen-reader users on actual routes. Twenty-three findings, nineteen fixed before the next release. The remaining four were documented publicly with timelines.
Where it landed
Mobile completion rose from 41% to 73% across three releases. Counter volume fell without a single passenger complaint campaign, which is the metric the operations team actually cared about.
Next project
Nine days to two