Creating a sense of agency

The service design project, in collaboration with Norrtåg and Bio Fuel Region, explores how the train can become an attractive hub in people’s everyday mobility. The team’s focus was to recognise acts of everyday resilience in relation to train travel and use service design methods to create a sense of agency in travellers. The design question guiding the work was: how might Norrtåg shift the passenger from someone things happen to, into someone who has a role in shaping their own journey experience? Grounded in ethnographic interviews, workshops and contextual inquiry, the result is a set of analogue and digital touchpoints intended to be interventions from Norrtåg that give the opportunity for travellers to take ownership of their time and needs on the train. These touchpoints appear across various stages of the journey with it’s range being both practical and celebratory. On one end, touchpoints such as a rental rack, ticket kiosk and a hotline, the practical and pragmatic needs of a traveller are covered. On the other, on-train experiences such as the Travelling Canvas and Discussion Tables bring out a celebratory and playful side of interventions from Norrtåg’s end. Together, they propose a version of Norrtåg that recognises its passengers' needs and struggles and actively holds them along the way.