My colleague, who was the Service Designer then, asked if I knew a story about a train in Europe where passengers were complaining that the train ride was long and exhausting. I didn’t know. She proceeded to tell the story further.

The passengers had been complaining about how long the ride was from point A to B. Complaints rose by the day. It got the attention of management. They asked engineers if it would be possible to cut the rail shorter to reduce travel time. It was feasible but extremely expensive to do. The second idea was to upgrade to a faster train. Again, it would be a costly investment. What they did next was invite Service Designers and ask them to figure out the best and cheapest solutions possible. They took the challenge and started doing two things: one, they went to the station and did nothing but observe; two, they conducted user interviews.

Later, what they learned was that passengers felt the ride was long because there wasn’t much they could do on the train. Bear in mind, this was in the early 2010s when internet wasn’t as affordable, and there was no TikTok either.

Their solution? They installed WiFi and gave free access to the passengers. It was brilliant. The ride was the same duration, same length. But the complaints dropped dramatically! You probably can guess the reason. Yes, because passengers occupied their time browsing the internet and watching videos on YouTube. Time passed so fast when it was occupied with activities.

For your next design project, don’t just focus on the screen itself, nor your well-documented user flows. Zoom out. Look at it from a bird’s-eye view. Look at your customer journey mapping, structure it into Pre, During, and Post. Understand how would they interact, where are the entry points and touchpoints? From that high ground is where creativity and innovation spark.

Oh, have you heard similar story on what happened to the Houston airport? Perhaps I’ll write it on future post.