Railway stations as a destination

At the recent Railway Terminal Conference in Vienna, the focus was on what can railway stations learn from airports and how can the passenger experience be enhanced?  It is clear that railway stations, at least the mainline stations, have come a long way from being the dirty, unattractive places of years ago.  With the opening of St Pancras International and the new King's Cross concourse in London, the integration of iconic architecture and historic buildings are providing wonderful spaces to start or end journeys.

But many of the speakers at the conference suggested that the next step was to make railway stations a destination in their own right rather than just part of a journey.  Making them more meaningful in terms of their place in the city - something that airports can't achieve.  The intent is to bring more people into the station who actually don't get on a train.

But there was little insight into how this improved the passenger experience.  Making stations a "destination" seems to translate into different and varied "commercial offers" - i.e. shopping.  Whether its eating and drinking or buying stuff, this seems to be what the operators want (you can see the financial rationale!).

What this seems to fail to acknowledge is that this adds little value to the travelling passenger.  In fact the risk of all these shoppers and retail outlets cluttering up the stations seems to be significant.

What was totally absent from the discussion, was how you enhance the door to door experience of the railway passenger.  Not much has changed in this area other than being able to buy tickets in advance on-line.

Where is the innovation?  Next door at the airport Passenger Terminal Expo, everything was about changing the experience of for the passenger.  Sure there was plenty about retail but loads more about self-service check-in, bag drop,  security, boarding etc.  In other words doing things differently.

So what can the railway industry do to enhance the passenger experience other than designing majestic stations?

Virtual store in Korea

Tesco have been trialling a virtual store in Korea which are an interesting reflection on how to fill potential time gaps in the customer's day and provide something closer to the experience of being in a supermarket and seeing the products you are buying.  Posters of stocked shelves are displayed and you scan the item you want with your smartphone, it is added to your order and delivered to your home.  They have trialled them in subway stations with the suggestion that the order is waiting for you at home.

Does the railway industry understand passengers?

Telling interview in The Guqrdian this weekend... TRAIN FARES Richard Gibson, head of communications, CrossCountry Guardian Weekend: I tried to book a CrossCountry train journey from St Austell to Macclesfield. The only available ticket was £147.50, eight weeks ahead. Train companies boast about low advance fares – the trade-off for pricey walk-on fares. What’s going on? Richard Gibson: Not all journeys have an advance fare. We set the fare between St Austell and Birmingham, so we can offer an allocation of advance fares for that part of the journey. But Birmingham to Macclesfield is set by another operator. GW: But both segments of the journey are aboard CrossCountry trains. RG: The way fares are set, we cannot provide allocation of advance fares on the second part. GW: Why? RG: Because that is the way the system is set. GW: Who sets the system? RG: The Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc). They would be quite happy to explain the national fare structure. GW: I then booked the two parts of my journey separately on your website. I bought one ticket from St Austell to Birmingham, and one from Birmingham to Macclesfield, on the same CrossCountry trains I’d been quoted £147.50 for. The new price was £65. That’s £80 cheaper. RG: Yeah. GW: How can you justify that? RG: If you choose to buy multiple tickets for a simple journey, you may find it’s considerably cheaper. But you’re not getting the guarantee of the service all the way through. If your train from A to B was delayed, and you missed the train from B to C, you’d have to buy a new ticket. GW: Do you think that’s a fair way to treat your customers? RG: This is the industry system and you’d need to contact Atoc. GW: Do you think it’s fair that one person could pay £147.50, but another could split the tickets and pay £65 for the same journey on the same trains? RG: I think the fare of £147.50, at less than 50p per mile, is a fair price for the 300-mile journey. GW: But in the end I paid just £65. RG: I think that £147.50 to travel from St Austell to Macclesfield is a fair price for the journey. GW: You keep telling me it’s fair, but when people read this they’re going to say: it’s absurd and you’re ignoring my question. Why can’t CrossCountry write on their ticket site, “It may be cheaper to book your journeys separately.” RG: Because not every customer wishes to do what you’ve tried to do. GW: Not every customer wishes to save money? It is a hassle, but you should still tell them. Why won’t you? RG: Because that would be confusing to customers. GW: I think customers would like to save money. RG: I think we disagree on what we think our customers would prefer. GW: In an ideal world, would the fare system be different? RG: I have no idea what an ideal world would look like, I’m afraid. GW: Do you think CrossCountry should be transparent about the fact they can’t control all of their ticket prices? RG: I don’t think it would be useful for customers to put a section on our website to explain how the fare system works. I think it’s providing a level of complication. GW: I think the customers are grown up enough to understand it. RG: I tell you what, I will pass your suggestion on to the revenue team and the commercial director to see if they are able to do anything with it. GW: Please do. There are lots of examples where understanding people is improving. This isn't one if them!

A virtual day in court - design thinking

For an insight into how design thinking and in particular, the importance of considering the human factor in design, have a read of this report from the RSA in to the use of video conferencing technology in courts. It makes the point that the technological solution is there but most people have recognised that just implementing a technology solution will fail as there are a number of human issues related to its use that must be considered. There is recognition that the solution must "design every aspect" of the wider system and not just the kit. 

The report study highlights some really interesting human issues such as perceptions around cost-cutting measures that ignore any benefit and a load of issues around being face-to-face and reading the faces of people. It also highlights the role of design thinking in engaging with all stakeholders not just those that might seem more important. In this case it would be a grave mistake to not understand the perspective of defendants and witnesses and instead focus on the needs of judges and lawyers.

 There is a really nice description of how designers, using knowledge of people and behaviour, can be so helpful in the design of services like this in delivering insight into the experience of different "users" and using methods like story boarding a "day in the life" to get all parties to see the issues.
A Virtual Day in Court

Imagining the world of 2030...

At the end of last year, we ran an internal project trying to imagine what control rooms might be like in 2030.  What was interesting wasn't especially the thoughts on the work space but the wider sociological issues that might drive change in the control of our infrastructure.  We imagined a world where congestion and climate change had driven a move to localism creating hubs where all aspects of our environment were managed from.

Further thinking on what the world might hold in terms of the way we work and live and how technology might change our world can be seen at the Sony Futurescape website.  There are some interesting videos imagining four different scenarios for the future.  Take a look...

To continue the theme, CCD recently sponsored a brief for design students at Loughborough University to take on during their design week.  We will be posting some of the results here soon.

Improved Passenger Experience with Smartphone Technology

Alongside improving the design of airports, providing simpler wayfinding, and making the security process less stressful, the ever present smartphone seems to be the battleground for providing better information to the passenger at a number of points on the journey.

This article from the Amor Group presents a good summary of the current applications and uses for smartphone technology.  Worth a quick read:

Smartphones as an Enabler for Improved Passenger Experience

Interaction design awards...and the Spotify Box

The winners of the 2012 Interaction Design Awards have been announced - http://awards.ixda.org/interactionawards2012

We really like the Out of the Box winner (http://awards.ixda.org/entry/2012/out-box).  Its become all to easy to assume that the modern smartphones are all so intuitive that we don't need help to use them.  Maybe they are for the younger generation (my kids have no problems at all!) but for older users the change in their mental model of how it works is more problematic.

But our winner goes to the Spotify Box (http://awards.ixda.org/entry/2012/spotify-box).  The concept is fantastic - a really simple way of listening to playlists without needing your laptop or mobile device; we loved such a fun way of getting back to the mix tapes of old!  It's also a nice cool piece of industrial design if you needed any other reason to love it.  Please someone put this into production!

Spotify box from Jordi Parra on Vimeo.