Designers: Claire Ongaro, Fucheng G., John M.
Partner: Capital Corridor Amtrak
In Professor Tom Maiorana's "Human-Centered Design" course, we were tasked with redesigning the Amtrak railcar. In less than ten weeks, groups researched a challenge, iterated our working prototype, and proposed our final design to Davis City Hall.
First, we defined design thinking and human-centered design.
Human-centered design allows us to develop a solution to a problem by integrating a human perspective into all steps of the problem-solving process. Throughout our design problem solving, we kept our audience at the center of our focus.
With a human-centered approach in mind, our team decided to head to the station and hop on the train to see what we could learn first-hand from passengers. We came prepared with open-ended questions to help guide conversations, without imposing bias and influence.
We divided interviewees into three categories: “commuters”, “weekend travelers”, and “employees” based on their relationship with the Capitol Corridor. After unpacking and analyzing their responses, we synthesized a list of needs unique to each category.
From commuters, we heard common concerns like reliability, comfort, and consistency.
e.g. An elementary school teacher who commutes from Fairfield to Concord regularly for work shared her most memorable experience: a half-hour delay on the first day at her new job. It was her first time using Capitol Corridor. Following the delay, always left for work early to account for possible delays.
Responses from weekend travelers were less customer-service and practicality related.
e.g. Multiple people described the pleasant sensation of the train movement swaying side-to-side, the relaxing peace and quiet that accompanies the scenery on the top-deck, and the overall excitement they felt awaiting their final destination on the Capitol Corridor.
All of our interviewees gave us valuable insight, but an enthusiastic employee at the Davis-Amtrak station provided the most interesting perspective for us. We chose to further explore his point of view.
He immediately took us on a historical tour of the Amtrak station, pointing out specific sites (e.g. there used to be a “women’s and children” room).
He was thrilled to share more information about the station, and although the information wasn’t directly beneficial for our project (as we were tasked with redesigning some aspect of the railcar itself), it was indirectly important. Interacting with this employee helped us understand what he finds meaningful and fulfilling as an Amtrak employee.
The employee has been with Amtrak for many years, and even worked on the railcars themselves. He loves the work he does, and he is very proud of it. However, he runs into frustrating situations with the passengers he interacts with.
"Troublesome human behavior”, as he describes it, never runs dry. Inside the railcar itself, people disrespect the space (most commonly the bathrooms), hog tables, and get intoxicated on game days. They can be rude and inconsiderate, and these interactions with passengers bring down his otherwise positive experience as an Amtrak employee.
We were able to truly empathize with his experiences with working at Amtrak and the Capitol Corridor.
Taking a look at the needs we uncovered from the various types of users, we found that it would be ineffective to focus our attention on one concern such as comfort or reliability because the other issues would still remain.
We did another round of investigating responses, and our immediate reaction was to look at the station and see what we can do with the information we gathered from the employee. We found a connection between some of our users that helped inform our abrupt change in direction from redesigning the railcar, to the redesigning the station.
Individuals with a deeper understanding and appreciation for how the Capitol Corridor operates and its history have a generally positive perspective. We also found relationships between weekend travelers and their inclination to learning and exploring to having a positive experience on the Capitol Corridor.
We then began to brainstorm ways we could execute our findings.
We concluded that our team can have the most meaningful and positive impact on fostering healthy relationships between employees and passengers. The best way to achieve this goal is to focus on where the journey begins: The Davis Amtrak Station.
We created and tested three prototypes to allow us to quickly learn and gather information regarding our ideas. The first prototype was a handwritten sign where we learned what is the most effective content to include and better methods of displaying our project idea to people that would view the sign.
For our second prototype, we created a more refined version of the signage that informed users of what our idea was. We were interacted with people and got their opinions on our proposal to create a historical tour at the Davis-Amtrak station.
For our third prototype, we created signage that contained information and images that featured specific landmarks. Our team was able to test giving the historical tours to passengers in segments that lasted approximately seven minutes. From these tours, we analyzed participants' interest through feedback, questions, and comments during the tour.
The general feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive: people really enjoyed the tours! They were surprised about the history at the station, from the breezeway that used to be found in between the waiting room, to the ticketing office and coal bunker beneath the station.
After conducting research, we found the most intriguing problem was the strained relationship between Amtrak employees and passengers. The Amtrak experience begins at the station, and can positively impact the remainder of the railcar experience.
This signage and monthly historical tours will create an appreciation for the station, employees who work there, and the overall Amtrak experience. Our proposed signage and guided historical tour will facilitate positive relationships, even before passengers step foot on the railcars themselves.
