Millions of Victorian commuters are now using the upgraded myki system to get around every day. They enjoy simple, accessible, flexible options for planning and paying for their journeys because we’ve focussed on what they need.

We were eager to get to work when our client of ten years, the Department of Transport Victoria (DoT), decided it was time to improve the myki account management systems while also improving access to the myriad technologies that support it.

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.

Over many years we’ve spent time understanding how people use all kinds of public transport – what their journeys are really like and what would make them even better.

Then we put everything we learned into improving their experience of planning and paying for their trips.  

A key change was the incorporation of myki account management into the Public Transport Victoria (PTV) website, so travellers can now manage their travel card in the same place they look up timetables, plan trips and gather changing travel information.  

We’ve paid attention to the details. Life’s simpler when you can manage the money on your myki card digitally in order to top it up and see how much money is left on your account – or, if you have impaired vision, having your screen reader quickly tell you what’s on a page. We know people just want to grab their myki card and get going. 

The things commuters might not notice, but still benefit from, are the technological smarts we developed to make the site load quickly with data from a range of sources, even coping with huge spikes in demand, while serving up-to-the-minute information that gives them choices about how they travel. 

Travel is so much easier when your digital transport tools are fast, intuitive and highly accessible, allowing people to plan or modify their journeys on the fly and dealing with changes without disruption.

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. 

Our clients appreciate having someone they can talk to whenever they have questions, so they’re always happy to have direct access to our senior team members who know how to explain things to them in plain language. 

No-one wants surprises, which is why our 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.

DoT now has greater control and flexibility with how their customer facing systems interact with key customer data, which means they can successfully deliver on their five-year Customer Experience strategy. 

The new unified API we designed and developed for DoT does the incredibly difficult task of making interactions between complex back-office environments appear seamless.

DoT’s expansive digital roadmap demands customer-focussed extensibility to the website, apps and the unseen future. Our solution has been designed with DoT and other technology partners to deliver a superb customer experience in the present, while maintaining flexibility for the future.