David Watts
CCD Design & Ergonomics
David Watts is Managing Director of CCD Design & Ergonomics. CCD is a leading human behaviour and design agency. It specialises in applying the science of human factors and ergonomics to the design process. It works across workspace design, wayfinding design, experience design as well as consulting on human factors problems. In 20 years of professional practice, David has run CCD’s input to a wide range of projects. These have included passenger experience work for High Speed 2, the design of the Emirates Air Line Cable Car, designing a National Situation Room for the Georgian Government, and designing new wayfinding systems for the V&A and the Tate St Ives.
The increasing demand for rail travel is placing a significant stress on the system which has limited capacity. The resulting impact on the level of crowding on many services into our cities is not delivering the experience that passengers are increasingly expecting in return for the level of fares they are paying.
There is a need for action. In the long term, the industry can’t assume that passenger demand will continue to rise as new transport alternatives come to market which offer a better experience. Our infrastructure and operation is large, complex and, in many areas, ageing. Improvements in capacity and passenger experience will require innovation; it will require some of the assumptions and current thinking to be challenged and reimagined.
The Transport Systems Catapult commissioned CCD to take a system-wide view of the challenges and see what recommendations could be made on how innovation might be unlocked to increase capacity.
The project ran with CCD engaging a wide range of industry experts and stakeholders through a series of interviews and workshops. We needed to understand where the real challenges lay and what kinds of interventions would result in significant benefit. The project reflected on the research findings from Passenger Focus into passenger satisfaction and the work of the Catapult into traveller needs. A lack of a seat on lots of rail journeys was identified as a major source of dissatisfaction.
Rail passenger demand has reached the highest level since the 1920s. The number
of passenger journeys in 2014-15 reached 1.65 billion. Current forecasts anticipate continued growth with a further doubling in demand over the next 30 years.
The project examined three main areas:
1. The macro-components that sit around the whole issue including DfT policy, regulations and standards.
2. Underneath that, the passenger journey metaphor can be used to identify the touchpoints that are influenced by passenger behaviour and sit at this junction between people and engineering.
3. Finally, there are the parts which could be termed the foundations. For instance, the track, the signalling infrastructure, the timetable and maintenance regimes.
The report that emerged from the study sets out a number of challenges that the railway industry should collectively be addressing in the search for increased capacity. It addressed the fundamental of what kind of experience is the industry trying to deliver for passengers and how human behaviour is likely to influence operations and capacity. The report covered three influences on capacity – managing demand, getting more from what we have and creating new capacity. In each of these, case studies were used to illustrate what is being tried at the moment and how they might influence future projects. The report also covered accessibility and inclusive design to ensure this is captured in the solutions developed.
The final section of the report addressed unlocking capacity through system thinking, incentives to passengers, providing space for innovation and how to manage innovation in the context of the business case.
Systems ergonomics , Station design, passenger information systems, CCTV and crowd management , Added value and cost benefits in rail ergonomcis/ human factors
