Birgit Milius
TU Braunschweig
Birgit Milius has studied Civil Engineering at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, specialising in railway engineering. Since 2000 she is working in the field of railway risk and safety analysis. She is now an assistant professor at the Institute for Railway Systems Engineering and Traffic Safety at the TU Braunschweig. Her main research interest still lies with all questions concerning risk and risk assessment. Furthermore, she has a research interest in human factors in railways with a focus on the application of human factors research in engineering.
The highest goal for a railway company is safety. Traditionally, it was thought that replacing the humans in the system with technology will make railways safe. However, experience has shown that there will always be people to... [ view full abstract ]
The highest goal for a railway company is safety. Traditionally, it was thought that replacing the humans in the system with technology will make railways safe. However, experience has shown that there will always be people to control railways. The focus has therefore shifted from replacing humans to integrating people better into the system. Very different research areas deal with this topic. Usability is a very well known and often used one. The primary notion of usability is composed of three aspects: effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. In recent years, this concept was criticized due to its strong focus on task- and goal related effectiveness and efficiency. Satisfaction in general was not considered a goal in itself but rather the result of effectiveness and efficiency. The usability concept was broadened to focus more strongly on user satisfaction. The new concept called user experience (UX) looks at emotions and the perception of non-instrumental qualities as a major topics. Considering usability and UX aspects in the development or upgrade of a system should, in theory, increase the work efficiency and reliability of, e.g. train drivers and train operators.
However, as the topic is rather new, only a limited amount of literature exits. To gain first hand experience, UX was assessed for a railway related VR experiment which was performed at the TU Braunschweig as well as for an interlocking simulation used by students at the same university. Questionnaires are the easiest way to assess a person’s emotions. Usually, these questionnaires present two complementary adjectives and the person choses on a five or seven point Lickert-scale which one best describes his or her experience. As it is important that the meaning of the adjectives is understood, two German-language questionnaires were possible options: AttrakDiff and UEQ (also available in English). As both are supposed to measure the same (hedonic) quality of a product, for research reasons we used both of them and compared the results. Surprisingly, the results did not match. Looking at the questionnaires, we found not only discrepancies in the used adjectives, but also in the general approach to what user experience/ hedonic quality is. There was feedback regarding difficulties of using the questionnaire because the (German native, engineering) students were not able to give a rating due to not being able to apply the adjective to the given scenario.
In the paper, we give an overview of the history behind user experience and what aspects can be assessed by it. We discuss, why this aspect is relevant in business settings. We present the results of the two assessments and its impact on further UX assessments. We will make suggestions about what to take into account when assessing UX in a railway environment and what to look for in questionnaires.
Ergonomics design in control facilities, train cabs and rolling stock , Human error and human reliability
