LED.U

It’s not a secret that when going on public transportation there are many thing one can get irritated with.

What we found out when asking around on our field study was that a crowded train is one of the problems people think is hard to handle. To not be able to get on the transportation and therefor have to wait for the next one is not always desirable, neither is being stuck inside a train not able to get out at your stop.

This problem is something we have chosen to find a solution for. Our solution is called LED.U and is based on behaviour design. We have put a lot of effort in studying behaviour related to colours and lights and we have also read about the a theory called nudging (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory) which is a well discussed theory saying that indirect indications can affect people better in their decision making than direct instructions. We found this very interesting and also it was something we had thought a lot about even before reading about it.

LED.U works so that when a train (we will keep using trains as an example but LED.U works on busses and other public transportation as well) reaches a certain point of ”crowdedness” green arrows appear on the floors to lead the people further into the train. The arrows are lit up by a lot of small LED-lights and are switching color between yellow and green to get a feeling of pointing towards a target. These features are based on our evaluations where we got the feedback that you rather follow something that move away from it.

For the lights to know when to turn on and off we have chosen to work with photocells that will be places inside the train and by the doors. They will count the amount of people in a specific zone and from that determine if it’s crowded or not and where to turn on the arrows. The arrows will be in usage only when the train stands still to no minimize that the users feel confused or annoyed.

Here is a video illustrating how this works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMlUmKYXtOI

The things that make this work:

• Subtle
• Small means
• Goes without thinking
• Users interact with small effort
• Not language related
• Users don’t need extra equipment

Let LED.U lead you the way!