Background
Transport for NSW successfully rolled out Opal ticketing in NSW however the removal of the MST Pensioner Excursion Ticket (PET) and other paper vouchers presented a number of issues for Customers as they could no longer bulk-purchase cards or vouchers for travel. Consequently these Customers were required to purchase either Single Trip Tickets (STTs) or Opal Cards for their clients, and this has resulted in a number of issues including:
- An unexpected increase in travel costs
- Increased wait times at Top-Up Ticket Machines when school/tour groups need to travel
Increased operational costs associated with production costs for Adult and Child/Youth.
- Opal Cards being used for a single trip i.e. travel from one location to another location on the Opal network
- Problems for schools which are unable to use purchase cards or a corporate credit card
Though the Buy-ability scheme The Flagstaff Group were the chosen vendor to store and distribute the card stock and Internetrix the chosen technology provider for the online ordering service.
Objectives
The system had to have the ability to obtain multiple cards easily for approved customer groups. The solution needed to manage the approval process and solve pricing issues. The cards need to have preloaded values that are paid for via credit cards online with unique IDs to handle faults and refunds.
Solution
The ordering system was delivered as a cloud solution on SilverStripe Framework which integrated seamlessly with the Flagstaff ordering and inventory system, and suitable credit card payment gateways. The main workflows Internetrix had to design for were an account approval workflow, purchasing workflow and complaints & enquiry management workflow. All workflows were made accessible to WCAG AA standard and user tested by Internetrix Design team.
The technical challenge presented was that the cards needed to be sold to approved buyers only at the agreed bulk pricing rates. The project was a collaboration with The Flagstaff Group who manage the stock and fulfilment of the orders. It was Internetrix’s job to build the ordering system and ensure that the ID’s of individual cards could be tracked and traced to the individual orders. A key requirement is that faulty cards must be tracked to a single order within the bulk card orders and replaced. A noteworthy feature on the project was the CIN ID scanner integration to aid the order fulfilment process and reduce the risk of human error when updating order statuses.
The key outcome of this project was the timely delivery of a custom cloud service that manages the purchasing process end-to-end between multiple parties. The platform also allows for comprehensive reporting, providing full transparency across the ordering system for key stakeholders.
My Role
UI Design & UX Architecture
My challenge : To match the design to their existing website using their strict branding & accessibility guidelines.
My Involvement : I was involved form the beginning of the project , which included initial stakeholder meetings, UX work done in preparation for the brief & HTML code execution & review.
