With the current focus on electric power, autonomously assisted drones and self-driving vehicles, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture for transportation.
At the Future of Transportation World Conference in Cologne on July 6th, tangerine CEO Martin Darbyshire presented what a seamless passenger journey could be in like in 2050 and how design can transform the customer experience, as opposed to just meeting expectations.
Martin addressed what the key challenges will be for rail by 2015, with increasing urbanisation and an ageing population putting new strains on infrastructure. By 2050 a staggering 75% of the world’s population will live in cities and 30% of the population in developed countries will be over 60 years old.
He presented a vision for improving today’s travel experience with an app that helps plug the current gaps in people’s experience travelling between different modes of transportation, by utilising shared services to create a single unified end-to-end passenger experience. For instance, the app helps you to know whether you have time to grab a coffee before your train departs by coordinating the predicted queue length with how long it’ll take you to get to the platform in time for your train departure.
Martin gave a vision for the future, with smart stations and train carriages that minimise dwell times and improve passenger flow through a station, with longer trains and platforms to accommodate an ageing, less mobile population. He showed how the introduction of digital surfaces on the exterior and interior of the train could provide information to help passengers quickly identify an unoccupied seat and explained how by shifting passenger expectations on-board a train, the carriage and seating could be reconfigured to better utilise space during peak times to ease overcrowding.
“At tangerine, we’re thinking about how to address some of the key challenges facing transportation and infrastructure in the future,” says Darbyshire. “Central to this is using a designer’s insight to identify what people’s needs will be, anticipating the potential pain points for passengers and creating design concepts which help our clients in rail, aviation and the automotive industries to use this intelligence. Our aim is to create truly seamless passenger experiences that will enrich all our lives."
