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In this endeavor we had to improve co-ordination between the
dispatcher and bus drivers in Indiana University Campus Bus Service, Bloomington.
The dispatcher is primarily responsible for allocation, scheduling and managing
all the resources such as drivers, buses etc., The challenge was to communicate
changes made by dispatcher to the drivers and create an awareness system
to know swiftly the route and timing of a bus driver for handling emergencies.
We conducted contextual inquiry taking multiple trips to the bus dispatcher’s
work environment. We rigorously learned their daily tasks and problems or limitations
at that time. After this we conducted a participatory design session with the dispatcher to tease out the useful values of the design and the form of the device.
We made paper mockups of a tablet PC based design called “Plop” which creates
awareness of the resource changes to pertinent drivers. The “Plop” has two parts –
one is “E-pad”, a tablet PC modeled design for the dispatcher and the other being
“Smart Radio”, an advanced bus radio for the drivers. We evaluated the design
with the dispatcher and the drivers. Finally we concluded with interesting possibilities
for further research and redesign.
Link to detailed report
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Methods & tools:
- Participatory design
- Contextual inquiry
- Whiteboard
- Paper prototype
- Interview
- Usability testing
Contribution:
- Research
- Ideation
- Prototyping
- Testing
- Documentation
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