In this UX Australia 2017 talk I walked the audience through the challenge of redesigning wayfinding and information at stations. Over the course of a week, we asked nearly 100 members of the public to navigate a simulated station environment, iterating designs between every session based on what we learnt.
Challenging a traditional industry approach where wayfinding comes at the end of the
engineering/architectural design phase, I showed how the team deep-dived into
understanding the user perspective from the beginning of the project and how it has
influenced the outcomes Victorians will see in the Flinders Street station upgrade and future station designs and upgrades.
Flinders St Station: Usability Test in a Mock Up station
1. Flinders Street Station: A journey
to implement UX in Wayfinding
& Customer Information
Carolina Gaitan
Senior User Experience Planner
Network Planning
40. The core insight into action
‘Purpose first’ vs. ‘type of asset first’
41. The core insight into action
A service information point for unfamiliar
users at a convenient ‘dwell point’
Fixed and Tailored Real Time Information
Snapshot of service status for familiar
users on the move.
Same asset but different purpose = different content design
47. 51
Non- visual elements for
vision impaired users
Frameworks and
guidelines to influence
Environmental Design
Application of the core
insight in Online Support
– Journey Planning
Service Design to customer
facing channels
More touchpoints to work on
Detail design of visual
elements
Applying the core
insight in an
Integrated Transport
environment at TFV
Project: Customer Experience Strategic Plan for Flinders Street Station
Workstream: Wayfinding & Information
WHY – HOW – WHAT GOT FROM IT – WHAY IT’S BEEN A GREAT SUCCESS AND CASE STUDY FOR US AT PTV AND NOW TFV
Why we set up a mock up station
The results – what we learnt
How that has change the way PTV and TFV approach design challenges
Can some one tell me how this information of departures has been arranged?
Maybe you’re not from Melbourne… some one from Melbourne? Come on…
It’s pretty obvious that it’s arranged by ‘operational lines’ - these are the way the people from operations look at the metropolitan lines… pretty obvious right?
Ok we could do better for tourist and visitors… Oh but ‘daily commuters’ would find it really easy!... Well they proved themselves wrong!
Before the usability test with users we took the project team – people across PTV, MPV and Metro – and gave them some tasks (same principle of usability test) – we thought that it was going to be easy for them (most of them know the network upside down)…
But they ended up like this poor guy looking at it for a long time to find the information they needed to perform the task and many of them were offered help from strangers (they didn’t have anything that identified themselves as PTV, Metro, etc)… This was eye opening for them.
The starting pointWe know the problem – A broken system
follow best practices around the world with colour mapProblem to solution mindset
The starting pointWe know the problem – A broken system
Asset oriented
follow best practices around the world with colour mapProblem to solution mindsetThe LinkedIn post about heritageNew stations – the signs are an afterthought in the processComplexity: XX stations – operations constrainsThe target market: from picking your most important customers to you have to design for everybody
Stations with:
Multiple lines going through – Multiple platforms
Multiple entry points
Multimodal connections
Connection to multiple places of interest
Plus multiple types of users
The starting pointWe know the problem – A broken system
follow best practices around the world with colour mapProblem to solution mindset
We created a new station within the network
First day we tested the current system
Days 2 & 3 new colour system and iterations from learnings
Filmed everything with CCTV – control room
Filmed some users with go pros
Concourse
Unpaid and paid area
Ticketing booth – no details tested
Information points
Multiple platforms / 2 functional
Multiple points of entry
Internal group of facilitators including the design team and the product development team