User-Centred Design of a Train Driver Display
Robert Stjernström · 2001
This paper describes how a graphical user interface was developed in the TRAIN Project at the Department of Information Technology at Uppsala University. The TRAIN Project was initiated by The Board of Accident Investigation due to the commuter train accident in lvsj in 1994. The Swedish National Rail Administration was assigned to fund and manage the project, while independent researchers where assigned to carry out the research. One objective has been to investigate how the future work environment for train drivers can be improved. To accomplish this, requirements have been collected using user-centred design with rapid prototyping in Java and XML. Another objective has been to introduce user-centred design as an advantageous method for further development of the graphical user interface The result is a prototype containing most of the requirements from the drivers in the work group. The prototype is interactive and simulates the real behaviour of a train - acceleration, retardation and the train track are modelled according to reality. The conclusions are that the prototype can be used by train drivers to refine the requirements of the system even further. Furthermore, the prototype can be used to give management a deeper understanding of what type of system the users require and an implication that the user-centred design can be favorably employed in future work. Acknowledgement Many thanks goes to Human-Computer Interaction at the Department of Information Technology at Uppsala University for giving me the opportunity to carry out this work. I would especially like to thank my two supervisors Erik Borlv and Eva Olsson. Without you, this work would not have been possible. Thank you Erik for giving me great help through the programming parts, and Eva for the sugge...