myki made simpler for millions of Victorian commuters
Commuters using the Department of Transport Victoria’s myki system needed a secure, intuitive way to easily plan and pay for their journeys all in one place
The challenge
Millions of Victorian commuters use the upgraded myki system to get around every day. People have high expectations of digital government services – they need to be secure, fast, intuitive and highly accessible.
Our client of ten years, the Department of Transport Victoria (DoT), engaged us to improve the myki account management systems and to simplify commuter access to the myriad technologies that support it.
The previous myki system provided a clunky interface for users who wanted to do simple tasks quickly. Users had to go to several different sites to manage their myki travel card, look up timetables, plan trips and see notifications about changes to the transport system. This system had complex processes and was error prone. It couldn’t be improved as it wouldn’t allow external systems to interact with any of the myki subsystems.
A new API was needed that make it as easy as possible for customers to use the PTV website and PTV mobile app to:
log in with a myki account
order and pay for myki cards or specific passes
top up myki card balances
manage payments and review transaction histories using multi-factor authentication (MFA).
About myki
myki is a reloadable credit card-sized contactless smart card ticketing system used for electronic payment of fares on most public transport services in Melbourne and regional Victoria, Australia.
What we did
Our approach began – as all our projects do – with understanding how people use all kinds of public transport. We investigated what their journeys are really like and what would make them even better.
We were fortunate to have spent years working with this long-term client and their customers, so we could build on our existing knowledge to improve the myki experience of planning and paying for trips using computers or mobile devices.
A key change we made was to incorporate myki account management into the Public Transport Victoria (PTV) website, so travellers could manage their travel card in the same place they looked up timetables, plan trips and gather changing travel information.
We paid attention to the details from the newly designed web front end, through to the reusable components within the system.
“We focussed on giving myki customers an accessible and responsive website – so they could manage the balance on their myki card or, if they had impaired vision, use their screen reader to quickly tell them the essential information on a page. The website was built to provide customers with all the functions they need, while remaining flexible to cater for future evolution of the site, through the use of structured, reusable code and components.”
– Marcus Nyeholt – Head of Technology, Symbiote
The things commuters might not have noticed, but still benefitted from, were the technological smarts we developed to make the site load quickly with data from a range of sources, coping with huge spikes in demand, while serving up-to-the-minute information that gives them choices about how they travel.
“Great system choices, excellent DevOps practices and bulletproof communications channels: these were the ingredients that allowed us to repeatedly release stable deployments. Our clients trusted us to test and release improvements to the interface without interruption to the users or the system. We had the plans, systems and know-how in place to ensure every release was fully functional, with a simple rollback solution to manage the risk of reverting changes. The whole system was built to be maintained in modules.”
“We implemented a middleware layer API, which provided endpoints tailored to fit the requirements while hiding irrelevant details of 3rd party APIs. This enabled us to create a great interface for the UI implementation and other digital channels.”
– Marcus Nyeholt – Head of Technology, Symbiote
The result
Our client appreciated having direct access to senior Symbiote team members who knew how to explain things in plain language.
As a result of this project, DoT achieved greater control and flexibility with how their customer-facing systems interact with key customer data, which means they could successfully deliver on their five-year Customer Experience strategy.
Rapid development of the infrastructure was supported by great DevOps practices. Developers and DevOp engineers worked very closely to take performance, security and stability into account. Any issues and concerns were quickly dealt with through our clear communication channels.
Deployments of such a complex application can often be a pain point and delay new releases in functionality. In this project, rapid deployments were one of our strengths. The whole team was involved in ensuring that deployments were stable, repeatable and frequent. We use automation in a savvy way to enable swift releases of functionality.
Projects of this size need more than just technological and programming know-how – they also rely on expert project management and communication at every step along the way.
Daily stand-up team meetings and frequent reporting kept everyone in the loop about what was happening and what was coming up.
“We worked closely with our technical counterparts at the DoT to develop ways to understand and manage complex inter-relationships between a number of different systems, handling surges in demand, allowing for future improvements and keeping options open to allow compatibility with technology that doesn’t even exist yet.”
– Amanda Brown – Head of Strategy and Projects, Symbiote
