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On-time information about delays and predicted arrival time, based on the history data.

Spring 2019

Team: Otto Österman (developer) & Adrien Hustache (project manager, developer)

I worked as a Head of Design

Goals

  1. To improve communication between VR and passengers.
  2. To make the train travels less stressful.
  3. A dashboard that includes several different visualizations (defined based on the course requirements)

The final design

The interactive prototype. Emmi Putkonen
Let’s see how we ended up with this:

Interview

We interviewed two people who travel by train quite often. We found needs for improvement in the VR train information:

It’s annoying when your train is late. It’s difficult to find information about delays.

The essential information is the arriving time – not the delay in minutes but the actual time.

The information should be available in multiple places: online and at the platform/train.

Finding the train should not require remembering the train number.

Design

The design was restricted by the data available and the skills of developers in my team. This is why the interactive prototype is designed for the desktop instead of applying the mobile-first approach.

Paper prototyping. Emmi Putkonen

Questionnaire

How to visualize the data? I set a questionnaire asking how people would understand the timelines.

The following graphs present train journey from A to B. Orange line draws along the journey in-time information about how well a train is on schedule – is the train late or ahead.

82%

n=11

“From down to up is a ‘rising’ which communicates going forward”

18%

n=11

“You see delay fist when it’s on top and it’s usually more important information than being ahead of the schedule.”

Design decisions based on the interview

Estimated arrival time and departure time are the most relevant information. Pink dots

Probability (%) of the estimated delay, next station (not yours) and map are quite important. Orange dots

Historical data is nice to know. Gray dot

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