Reframing a connected-train request around passenger and operator needs

Travel information and service support are fragmented across the journey. Passengers move between planning, stations, trains, connections, disruption, and arrival, while operators need the information and tools to support that experience. Bombardier also needed to understand how applications, vehicle and service data, and APIs could become a coherent platform rather than disconnected experiments.

I challenged the initial technology-first framing and proposed a discovery program grounded in passenger, employee, operator, and partner needs.

The multidisciplinary team used interviews, train journeys, competitive evaluation, journey mapping, concept development, and prototyping to turn a broad connected-train ambition into specific opportunities.

Documented project activity included 62 interviews, more than 20 train journeys, roughly 850 km of fieldwork, approximately 900 research data points, more than 40 evaluated applications, 23 concepts, and 24 prototypes. These figures describe the scale of the work, not market adoption or commercial impact.

The work produced a connected product direction across three related parts:

• Passenger applications and services across the travel journey.
• Operator capabilities for supporting passengers and service delivery.
• Bombardier data and API capabilities that could enable both.

The program delivered customer-experience strategy, business strategy, a data and API strategy, prioritized service concepts, and tested prototypes. According to the direct project account, it moved into a development phase in 2017.

I was involved from sales through delivery and client management. I reframed the engagement around discovery, led the multidisciplinary program, and contributed directly to the customer-experience, business, data, and API strategy.

The design organization mattered because it allowed research, service design, business design, engineering, delivery, and client decisions to operate as one program. That contribution is reflected in the shape and quality of the delivered work rather than treated as a separate organizational case.

The verified result is a substantial discovery, strategy, and prototype program that defined a three-sided connected-service platform and progressed into development. Broad market rollout is not independently verified, so the work remains described as a pilot rather than a launched market product.

• Reframed a technology request around passenger and operator evidence.
• Defined a connected product direction spanning passenger services, operator capabilities, and Bombardier data and APIs.
• Produced customer-experience, business, and data/API strategies.
• Developed and evaluated 23 concepts through 24 prototypes.
• Progressed the program into a development phase while retaining an accurate pilot designation.