Role
Lead AR designer
Team
6 (Industrial designers, software engineers, designers)
Goal
Design an augmented reality application to assist train drivers in responding to emergency situations
Methods
Interviews, secondary research, prototyping with ShapesXR
Key learnings
This project was part of the course Virtual Reality in University of Twente. Project teams built virtual or augmented reality (VR/AR) solutions for cases provided by companies. In our iteration of the course, the provider was Nerlandanse Spoorwagen (NS), the main railway operator in the Netherlands.
How can VR/AR enable the digitalization of train operation?
…was the case provided by NS. It was broad so that teams could work on different ideas, but it also meant that we had to specify the problem we wanted to focus on solving.
Our strategy for this is to find the intersection between (1) What problems are NS facing? and (2) What problems can be solved by VR/AR technology? Based on what we learned from the lectures and presentations by NS employees, we decided to focus on the problem of emergency response.
The breakdown of a train during operation can lead to serious disruptions to the train network, affecting thousands of passengers and causing financial losses. While drivers can respond to minor problems by themselves, they often need remote assistance for more serious breakdowns.
Currently, assistance is provided by engineers from a remote support center. The current process presents the following problems: