RTWH Aachen - M. Sc. in Media Informatics

Designing Interactive Systems

Final project : Travel Optimizer

Home - Project definition - User interview - Paper ptototyping - Prototype - Testing with and without users - Redesign and presentation

User interview
Assignment 7

Interview of Mareike

When asked for a situation in which she takes public transportation she replied that there is usually only one reason. She is going to be drinking alcohol and won’t be able to drive. A typical encounter she told us was the following event. Going to a party she met up with a group of friends at the bus stop. Since most of her friends seldom use the bus they realized at the bus stop that they didn’t know exactly how to get there. Yet since they knew their way around town they came up with the rough direction that they needed to go. They also managed to get on the correct bus, but sadly they got of a stop to early. This meant that they had to walk for 30 min until they finally arrived at the party. In addition to the fact that they had already missed the first bus, and had to wait 30 minutes till the next bus arrived, they arrived an hour late. For a party this is not very problematic but for meetings this would be a large problem. The trip back was even worse. When they got to the bus station (after having had a couple of drinks) they realized that they had already missed the last bus. They now had to call a taxi, not knowing the number.

The suggestions that came up during the interview were the following. The device should show the route and give information about when one has to get off the bus or Strassenbahn. This would be even more helpful if it would work nationwide. In addition it should have an alarm of when one has to leave. The final suggestion is that it should display the telephone number of a local taxi service if there aren’t any more busses or the wait would be too long. (Where the measure of too long should depend on the distance that needs to be travelled).