At the Derby Litchurch Lane Works , bombardier designs and build rolling stock on site.

It also houses life size designs of the trains for design and engineering review and user-testing purposes.

Contracts to build, assure and maintain the trains are held over long periods, often up to 35 years, known as the design life of the train.

In Dervy, Bombardier produced their Aventra and Electrostar trains for operators such as:

• Transport for London

  • London Overground

  • London Underground

• Heathrow Express

• Elizabeth Line (Crossrail)

• West Midlands

• Thameslink

• Heathrow Express

• Stanstead Express

• Cairo monorail

...and many others

I worked in the Design and Human Factors department at Bombardier in Derby.

During my time with Bombardier I worked as the lead for the department on the highly anticipated:

• Elizabeth Line (Crossrail)

• 4 Lines modernisation (4LM) project for Transport for London (Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines)

The Elizabeth Line, known at the time as Crossrail, was a long term project developed with Transport for London to connect the  West and East of Greater London from Reading (Berkshire) to Shefield (Essex).

The 4LM project was an upgrade project to the existing rolling stock focussed around the trains cab. 

TfL wanted to automate their trains to provide a safer, more efficient service. It was my role to work with TfL, the engineers and the unions of the cab drivers to design and  produce a cab interface which would do this alongside other products designers and HF specialists.

• Microsoft suite

• Adobe suite

• Life size mock-ups of cabin and passenger areas for 345 stock

Within design and HF the role was often varied and required a lot of close daily working with other areas of the business with engineers, health and safety, programme management and importantly the end client.

Daily tasks included:

• Repackaging of switches: (4 Lines modernisation). Assessing which switches were non-critical and could be packaged in to the UI and which can buttons and switches needed to remain in the cab as a 'hard switch' 

• Cab displays: Assessing the Information Architecture (AI) of the cab UI and provide recommendations for any redesign. For example removing any unnecessary journeys  

• Design the vehicle packaging to ensure the correct numbers of passenger per squre meter were able to safely stand or sit with the passenegr areas of the train

• Creating the Passenger Information Displays (PID) to ensure they were able to succinctly and clearly show the correct travel information as well as any other required messages  whilst in service

• Content and placement of internal and external train signage to ensure safe readability and clarity for passengers

Standards for the design of the rolling stock need to ensure the safety and wellbeing of passengers and staff are extremely high as you can expect, with an estimated 3.6 billion journeys each year on TfL services alone.

Research is undertaken before each design tasks to help inform the design of element such as the UI display, Cab switches and layout and the passenger areas. Documentation was created to then assure the desiign for the customer.

Ethnographic

I spent multiple days learning the ropes with TfL drivers and staff in order to learn exactly what happens before during and after service. Documenting this immersive research is known as a Day In The Life Of (DITLO) document and helps to give clairty and assurance to a number of designs, not least the drivers cab.

In person user-testing

Life size mock ups of he cab environment and passenger areas were used for in-person testing on site in Derby. Being able to ask cab driver to perform specific tasks in situ was invaluable for learning if designs were successful and/or how iterations may be needed.

Card sort

Used to help discover users' mental models for UI display and switches for how content should be grouped. Asking users to arrange information which could be completed in the cab allowed the design to be optimised for their expectations.

Tree testing

Tree testing allowed us to evaluate the hierarchical category structures or 'tree', by having users find the locations in the 'tree' where specific resources or features can be found when it comes to the cab user interface.

One of the key roles of the Design and HF team was assurance.

Whilst the trains may be in service for 35 years typically, it will be the responsibility of Bombarider to ensure their maintenance and suitability for use.

Respective design and engineering documents were created and handed to the customer to fulfil this need and also help when servicing the trains in future.