On 25 October 2023, at the UIC Headquarters in Paris, as well as online, the third and last Passenger Services Group Innovation Workshop of the year took place on the topic of “Designing rail products and passenger experiences in the digital era”.
Luca Mariorenzi, Chair of the UIC Passenger Experts Subgroup, opened the Innovation Workshop and welcomed the participants who represented key rail industry stakeholders, including the Danish State Railways (DSB), Trenitalia, FS Technology, Eurail, Gysev, Renfe, MÁV-Start, LTG Link, the Polish State Railways (PKP), the Czech Railways (ČD), the Catalan Government Railways (FGC), the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), and UIC.
Following a short round of introductions, Stefano Scarci (EY) provided an overview of the changing needs and habits of travellers and of the best practices applied by leading digital companies to design and improve products and the customer experience. These best practices include both human-centred design methods (e.g., design thinking, job-to-be-done, value proposition canvas, service design) and data-driven decision making (e.g., A/B testing, which may involve running thousands of experiments to identify changes that have a positive impact).
Guest speaker Jeroen Schoenmakers from Eurail delivered a presentation on how Eurail is applying design thinking to the customer experience. In 2020, Eurail launched the Mobile Pass, in 2021 it transitioned to an Agile way of working and then finally to being a customer centric organisation in 2023. The master traveller journey is a conceptual and linear visualisation of the sequential experience that the majority of Eurail customers go through.
Every quarter, Eurail runs an innovation sprint to work on new initiatives with multidisciplinary, cross-functional teams.
In the breakout sessions, participants had the opportunity to experience a hands-on application of the design techniques showcased during the workshop to three hot topics for the rail industry:
- Applying design thinking to the creation of a Gen Z passenger experience
- Applying the value proposition canvas to the development of a fully eco-friendly travel experience
- Applying service design to disruption management
During the final plenary session, the outcomes of the breakout sessions were presented.
