Researching a niche travel app

There are 4,500 railway stations in Russia, but every 15th railway ticket in the country is sold for a certain high-speed train that links just two of them. This train called Sapsan connects Moscow and St. Petersburg, two major economic and cultural centers with a total population of 23 million.

Due to tight and intensive relations between Moscow and St. Petersburg, traveling between them by train is a very common thing for locals. For many, a trip from one city to another feels more like an Uber ride than a “serious” trip.

However, online travel shopping companies treat purchasing these tickets in the same way as a huge trans-continental trip you spend weeks planning! This seems like a niche with significant room for improvement.

The product hypothesis I had: a significant number of frequent travelers need a seamless and more casual way to buy a train ticket between two major Russian cities.

I conducted design research to explore the concept of a niche travel app that challenges the traditional patterns of travel apps and has notably bold UX and UI. This is the main screen of the app.

Although the product was never released due to the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it helped me to develop some interesting design hypotheses that I later used in my work.