MAKING TFL DIGITAL:

WEB, OPEN DATA AND BEYOND!

Phil Young – Head of TfL Online!!

Background the TfL challenge

Context our digital strategy

What customers want our digital strategy

Insights mobility as a great disruptor

The approach how we went about it

Key decisions the foundations on which we built

Outcomes our experiences so far

Overview

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BACKGROUND!

The TfL challenge - scale

Issues with previous web offering• Mobile site features were too limited

• Met core functional needs, but required user effort for more complex tasks (eg finding maps, logins).

• Too business/corporate focused

• Users wanted a more personalised experience

• Site was old-fashioned, poor use of modern screen sizes

• 70 sub-sites led to inconsistent experience

CONTEXT – OUR DIGITAL STRATEGY!

Understand what we stand for

Excellent reliability and

customer experience

Value for Money Progress & Innovation

Trust

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TfL Reputation Framework

What customers want Delivering ‘Every Journey Matters’ through digital

Easy to find help

Tasks are made simpler, to save customers time

Everything from TfL in one place

A personalised service‘Any place, any device’ access

Leads to

Customer experience reflects “Every Journey Matters”

Structured information is easy to find and accurate

Customers mostly self-serve

Staff can fix customer problems

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Six overlapping themes 1. Web – mobile, tablet and desktop World-class digital services for customers, fully integrated across all devices and services. Digital information displays and kiosks.

3. Employee digital tools Staff digital services and tools integrated across all devices. Mobile digital transforms how staff deliver services.

2. Open data and Apps Free and open data is the default. Proactively work with developers. Apps developed by the market. Intervention by TfL only where market cannot deliver.

6. Digital Marketing Digital channels fully integrated with traditional media campaigns as needed

4. Social Multi-way engagement for service information, customer service and marketing. ‘Social business’ to realise benefits of internal networking5. Value for Money

Simplified, integrated sites and services avoiding duplication across: development, hosting, content management, analytics, security. Third party revenue generated.

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Integration of public digital

tfl.gov.uk

Journey  PlannerAPI

Oyster/ ticketing

API

Congestion  ChargeAPI

Bus  Information

API

Cycle  Hire  API Roads  API

single sign-on

New  services  added  as  APIs

Producing a single TfL online service, through a single user interface and front-end application, using single sign-on and interfaces to each business system

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SOME INSIGHTS

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London has changed Londoners use the internet.It is seen as being ubiquitous and expected to be available.

of Londoners use TfL’s website.

use the internet for maps or directions.

GROWING

GROWING

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Our customers are going mobileof Londoners own a smart phone.

of Londoners use the internet on their mobile every day.

use TfL’s site via a mobile.

of Londoners use apps.

growth in tablet use

of adults now use one.

HUGEGROWING

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And becoming more socialof Londoners use of social media

83% of these use Facebook

18 – 24 year-olds spend on average on social networks

30% of these use Twitter

GROWING

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OUR APPROACH

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Direct engagement with over 70 key stakeholders !Stakeholder Working Group –Met every 2 weeks to review latest progress on the website in detail –Representatives from operational businesses, Marketing, and Customer Experience !Internal comms –Articles on intranet, in staff magazines and newsletters

Stakeholder engagement

Engagement with London TravelWatch, TfL’s Youth Panel, disability charities

INTERNAL EXTERNAL

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Requirements

Customer

TechnicalBusiness

The new site needed to meet customer needs first, while delivering on business objectives and taking into account technical considerations.

1. Consistent experience of TfL 2. Easy access to customer service 3. Personalised information & alerts 4. Real time info on-the-move 5. Improved navigation 6. Improved visual appearance 7. Humanised interaction 8. Simplified log-in 9. Integrated journey planning tools 10. Trusted source of information 11. Simplified experience 12. Reassurance around travel decisions 13. Control of personal information

Key customer requirements

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A ‘mobile first’ strategy •Travel information will be ‘mobile first’

•‘Responsive Design’ is being used to have a single website working seamlessly on mobiles, tablets and desktops

•Corporate information will be viewable on a mobile but best on desktop

•Some sites will take longer to convert to mobile due to contract lifecycles (eg Congestion Charging)

Concepts - Great on mobile

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The Journey Planner user interface will be significantly improved • Personalised based on previous

planning behaviour

• Improved access to options for accessibility and modes

• Integration with bus and Tube departures and live travel information

• Integration with Oyster balance and Journey History (later phases)

• Addition of fares information (initially single fares)

Concepts - Journey Planner

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The new website will make things easier for customers • Remembering common journeys, places

and preferences

• Presenting information for that individual customer

• Initially this will be without a login

• In later phases, through single sign-on, we will integrate TfL accounts and optimised the site for each customer

Concepts - Personalisation

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Testing concepts

KEY DECISIONS

New from the ground-up

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Responsive design

Whole site now on mobile

New information architecture New search

New Journey Planner interface

Google maps

Google Streetview

New Roads service board and mapping

New River service board

New Emirates Airline service board

New Trams service board

Re-written content – mobile first

Personalisation Localisation

New cloud hosting – more resilient and auto-scaled for capacity

Lower overall hosting costs

New caching solutions for personalised and localised content

New single, normalised API for efficient development, modal integration and developer benefit

Faster live info – 5m to <30s

Integrated fares in Journey Planner*

New ‘Nearby’ tool

Integration of all modes of travel information for the first time

Platform for further development, single sign-on, TDM, Contactless etc

MVC development model

New schematic mapping

Key decisions• In house team and multi-supplier environment – co-located

• Agile approach for iterative development

• Responsive design for best experience and simplicity of support

• Mobile first, for majority mobile usage in future

• Cloud hosting for scale, resilience and cost

• API based approach, normalised data model to allow integration

• Design for localisation and personalisation and future needs

• Transformation preferred over incremental change – accept risk, mitigate with agility

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Responsive design

Platform requirements - functional• Personalisation and localisation, high volumes of unique requests and spatial

queries

• Presentation layer separated from back-end applications so integration can be achieved

• Data will come from numerous disparate systems, with differing data models

• Integrated and consistent data is required for all transport services

• Integration of CMS and web application through MVC model

• Responsive design for mobile, tablet and desktop

• And many more.....

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Platform requirements – non-functional• Scalable to accommodate 30x spikes and beyond

• 24 hour services, 100% availability capability

• Fast response times

!• Limited capabilities of back-end systems

• Highly secure

• Realtime services

• Cost effective

• And many more....

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Choosing the cloud• Elastic capacity unmatched, autoscaling

• Speed and flexibility to stand up, automation for easier management

• Cost – pay for what you use

• Resilience and referencability

AWS selected because;

• Best match at the time for our multi-OS stack

• Cost effective

• Rapidly developing platform with new services and ongoing cost reductions

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Challenges of delivery• Applications evolving through an agile programme as platform being

built

• In house team and multi-supplier environment

• Challenging timescales to move from experimental to production

• Lack of cloud experience

• Platform maturity – still developing

• Internal scepticism

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OUTCOMES

What we delivered• A single API with a canonical data model, powers whole site

• Google maps integration throughout, replacing 5 different platforms

• Complex web application through MVC

• Multiple environments, ‘push button’ creation and product deployment

• Autoscaling

• Blue/green release approach

• Varnish caching layer

• Web application firewall

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• Journey Planner usage up 10% with highest ever number of visits (10 million) in April

• Mobile and tablets have made up 54% of visits so far, increasing to 64% at the weekends

• After two months 19 million unique devices had visited the new website, viewing 225 million pages in 48 million visits !

!!

Key customer outcomes

•Involving customers helped – use of beta sites, feedback, blogging, social and all forms of available engagement to gain buy-in !•Developing agility – in the new world cycles are days, weeks and months – not years – we’re still learning in this but making progress !•Building ‘mobile first’ – mobile is and will increasingly be the dominant device. Mobile first approach is well justified. !•Open data can help – leveraging developer community so we can focus on core assets has been really beneficial for us !•Thinking integrated – customers cross service and geographic boundaries !•Investing in digital – While some fixed and printed assets will always be required, personal digital is the future and requires investment !!

Some key learnings overall

What we learned – using the cloud• Benefits of scripting and autoscaling are very significant, but it’s

complex to do

• Specific cloud experience makes things much faster

• An integrated, co-located team of product development, infrastructure and operations really helps

• Need a mindset which allows for agility and can accommodate change

• This type of transformation is not easy – but worthwhile, requires bold decisions and some risk as elements may be unknown

• Operating costs can be significantly reduced

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Some Awards....‘Best overall user experience’ and ‘Best

information’ UXUK awards !

‘Best mobile solution’ International Design for Experience Awards !

Three ‘Honoree’ Webby Awards Webby’s are the leading international award honouring excellence on the Internet !

‘Best consumer website’ Digi Awards 2014

WHAT’S NEXT?

Coming soon• Further developing journey planning – national planning, fares

integration etc.

• Live launch of single API and app garden

• Increasing personalisation, new contactless payments, Oyster, travel alerts, favourites

• Single sign on for Congestion Charging in development with Cycle Hire to follow

• Moving Journey Planner to hybrid cloud

• Exploring ‘single view of the customer’ to bring services closer together

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THANK YOU