Design for the daily commuter -An ethnographic journey

Abstract

Commuting is a big part of daily life for many people in Norway, if we look to Oslo almost 80.000 people commute into Oslo every day from Akershus (Eggesvik, Bentzrød, 2016). Many transportation methods are being used on these commutes with the most popular being personal vehicles such as cars. Furthermore, railway travel comes in at third on the list (SSB, 2023). The use of railway transport and public transport is rising (VY, 2024), but if we look to Jernbanedirektoratets satisfaction survey of railway services in Norway from 2023, we can see that the overall satisfaction has fallen from 80/100 to 79/100. Furthermore, looking to Transport økonomisk institut’s report ‘’Changes and challenges in future transport –drivers and trends’’, they prospect railway to be the second most popular transportation method in Norway by 2050 (Langeland et al., 2022, p. 5). This thesis therefore explores what the problem points in the journey of the daily commuter are.

Using Ethnographic interviews to get in depth with five daily commuters. Where the most notable problem points noted are, Insufficient information flow from Ruter’s travel application to the commuter. The thesis proposes new design functions for further development of the Ruter application: Save your journey as favorite, Push notifications on favorite journeys and add your favorite journey to your lock screen. The question arises if the thesis prototype intervenes at the correct level, due to the biggest pain points being Delays and cancellations. There is reason to believe that the proposed functions are correct following the participants of the ethnographic study. They mentioned that they expect more from Ruter rather than just buying tickets and planning the journey. Even though the thesis gave a great deal of insight into the daily commuter’s life, more work needs to be done bringing in views from railway companies and, for example, Ruter.

Keywords: Daily Commuter, Railway travel, Ethnographic interviews, travel application