Banedanmark is in charge of looking after the state-owned train tracks and managing the railway traffic in Denmark. They're always looking for ways to make things better for the millions of passengers that rely on their service. With that in mind, they brought us on board, along with the design agency Kontrapunkt, to conduct in-depth user research, design and test new UI for departure screens and traffic information.
Observation
User Research
UX Design
Usability Testing
Workshop Facilitation
Challenge
We initiated the project with research to understand the current passenger experience with departure and traffic screens at danish train stations. Through observations and quick interviews, we found that different travelers had quite different information needs.
First-time travellers, especially tourists, sought more detailed information. The absence of their specific stops on the display often left them second-guessing their direction, leading them to seek confirmation from station staff or fellow passengers.
On the other hand, regular commuters mostly wanted timely updates, if the train was on time and where to stand on the platform in case of trains with fewer carriages, among other insights. Clearly, the current screens weren’t providing that level information to make their journey more frictionless and intuitive.
Approach
Working closely with the design team at Kontrapunkt, we fed the insights back to them and they used these among other data to develop and design the first version of the new information screen UI. We then went out and tested paper prototypes of the new UI with passengers.
We worked in quick sprints, so we continuously tested, fed back insights of the user experience and suggested UX and UI design tweaks that were used to create new iterations of the UI that we then went back out and tested.
We did extensive testing with a range of different user groups - from tourist at Copenhagen airport to elderly people that travel once a month, to everyday commuters on the main train hubs in Denmark, to ensure that the design and new information structure was easy to understand and user-friendly for all these different types of travelers. In total, we tested with and interviewed around 300 passengers across the country.
Outcome
"We have worked to create a simpler and clearer design, which passengers can easily understand. Therefore, we have removed what could be confusing and are working more with icons and animations instead of text. The design has been tested on passengers in several rounds, and we have received a lot of positive feedback"
Louise Christensen , Head of traffic information systems, Banedanmark
Today, when you travel by train in Denmark, the new design is what you are going to be seeing and engaging with. The new screen UI now enables passengers to view where on the platform the train will stop, where you need to stand on the platform to get on a specific carriage, the train's arrival times at subsequent stations, the location of pram and bicycle carriages, among other information.
Making public transport a more attractive choice is going to be important in the transition towards a sustainable future. I’m happy to have been apart of the research and design of the this project that now serves as the information backbone for the nearly 200 million travelers that use danish railway every year.