How technology can impact customer-facing train crew experiences

Customer-facing train crew have to follow strict procedures to guarantee that trains are safe and run on time. They are also responsible for revenue protection and customer care. Human factors and ergonomics research are instrumental to understand the safety-critical aspects and improve work. We bring user experience research and personas to describe how train crew perceive their routines and how new technology may impact them. We conducted seven hours of interviews and 30 hours of shadowing observations with train crew (n = 22) to provide an understanding of who are they and to define their experiences. We present crew’s current routines and created two personas to represent them. One is slightly reluctant to adopt the proposed technology, whereas the other is more accepting. Results indicate how such technology may affect crew work ergonomics and experiences, and suggest which valuable aspects should be maintained, for example the positive interactions with passengers.