I did some interviews with people that have disabilities.During my interviews, some people complained the original way to book assistant on the TFL website is too complicated and the assistant for the train often don’t show up or go to the wrong platform or are late.
I designed a prototype of the application. The aim of the product is to make it easier for people with disabilities to book an assistant for the train and travel without worries.
My initial idea is to design a VR experience for people with disabilities. There are some existed projects show how VR experience can benefit people with disability.
Then, I joined the facebook group “UK wheelers” and posted my idea in the group. I was looking to interview some members. Considered it might be inconvenient for some of them to interview in person, so I decided to interview people online. I got six people to volunteer to be interviewed. However, I messaged all of them but only got some responses. I interviewed them through the messengers.
I interviewed two members Michelle and Molly. My interview with Michelle inspired me a lot. I decided to focus on the problems for transportation for people with disabilities. She complained about how inconvenient it is for them to travel, and they hope the public transportation in general can be more accessible. Also, I saw some people in the facebook group complained about lots of problems of the assistant in train stations.
After understanding the problems they got from booking train assistant, I decided to make an app that can make them easier to travel.
The original way to book assistant from national railway is to fill up the whole form online. It is not convenient if you have to fill up same details repeatedly. Also, you can not contact your assistant from the website.
The aim of this product is to make it easier for people with disabilities to book an assistant for the train and travel without worries. By registering your own account, the app will keep your details. As the result, it will save time and be more convenient for users to book assistants. Users can also communicate with their assistant if they cannot see their assistant at the meet up point. The count down function can give users an idea of how far away the assistant is to make sure it’s not cancelled. Also, users can give reviews for the station. By receiving good reviews can encourage the staff at the station to be more willing to be the assistants.
I did some user tests with the final prototype. Some users suggested me I can make another versions of the app for the staffs in the station as they might have different perspectives of how the app can be useful for them
Each train company have different wheelchairs sizes they allow. However, some people complained about they can not measure the dimensions of their wheelchairs. So, I think it will be useful if users can search their wheelchairs’ models in the app by selecting the features of the wheelchairs and see what kind of trains can fit their wheelchairs.
