Copy Email
© 2026 Mark Vedberg
Train travel across northern Sweden can quickly feel uncertain and beyond passengers’ control. Through a participatory approach with travelers, we explored how information shapes people’s sense of control while travelling with Norrtåg. The resulting service concept reuses existing infrastructure to make information more proactive, accessible and participatory.
Context
Project 2 - General Service at Umeå Institute of Design
Collaborator
Norrtåg + Biofuel Region
Timeline
7 weeks in 2026
People
❤︎ With Aditi, Oğuzhan, and Alma
Keywords
Service Design, Participatory Design, Passenger Agency, Experience Prototyping, Public Transport
Connecting northern communities
Norrtåg connects towns and smaller communities across northern Sweden, serving both everyday commuters and longer-distance travellers. With sparse connections and few alternatives, the service can feel fragile: a delay, missed connection or unexpected change can quickly have a large impact, while passengers still have to place a lot of trust in the system.
Co-Creative Approach
We used interviews, onboard research, participatory tools and co-creative sessions to understand the service from different perspectives. This included frequent passengers, occasional travellers and people who did not normally take the train, keeping users involved throughout the design process.
A More Transparent Service
Information became central to how passengers experienced uncertainty and control. Knowing what was happening, being able to get answers, and having something to act on all made the journey feel more manageable. Our concept brings those findings together in one service, making information easier to access, follow and share throughout the journey.
Across our research, we saw how even small uncertainties can make a journey feel stressful and out of passengers’ control. Proactive data brings relevant information forward before they have to look for it, helping them understand what is happening and make decisions with more confidence.
Some of the most useful information on a Norrtåg journey already comes from the staff. Their announcements can respond to what is actually happening on the train, often giving passengers more context than other systems can. But that information is lost outside of that time and place.
When information only moves one way, passengers can feel powerless when something is unclear or goes wrong. The Norrtåg staff showed us the flip side: being able to ask questions, clarify information and get a response gave passengers a stronger sense of control. We also saw that a journey often matters to people beyond the person on the train, creating a need for information to be shared and understood more collectively.
Passive Notifications
Rather than sending every update directly to passengers’ phones, an onboard notification point quietly signals when a new announcement or chat message is available. Passengers can ignore it or tap their phone to access the update, making notifications present in the train without constantly demanding attention. By giving the update a physical presence onboard, it is understood as something belonging to the train that passengers can choose to bring onto their phone.
