Bachelor Research Project

The Dutch railways are struggling with distributing passengers evenly throughout the train. So, this research project explored if you can distribute people in the train by using haptic feedback. To do so, a prototype with haptic feedback was introduced to the participants of this study, where it was investigated how they behaved around the prototype. Furthermore, their thoughts and opinions about such feedback was gathered to get an in-depth understanding of their behavior. During the study people showed great willingness and motivation to use this method. Ninety percent understood the haptics of the prototype and assumed it could help them find an empty seat. When conducted on a larger scale, this research could advance the introduction of haptics in the trains to guide passengers. This haptic technology is not only limited to usage in a train, but could possibly also be implemented in public places. In the end this research project was featured on the Dutch Design Week in the Dutch Railways (NS) booth.

Key learning points:

- Make a prototype that could be controlled from your phone using Bluetooth.

- Got introduced to the research methodology

- How a research project differs from a design project