NS
HAPPY TRAIN INTERIOR
Netherlands Railways NS is the largest railway company in The Netherlands. With over a million commuters on daily basis, they need to perform every day to keep clients satisfied. Their ambition is to make users score at least 9 out of 10 on a regular train ride. For being able to do so, Mark van Hagen developed a special model for analyzing the
customer journey of NS. Based on this model, NS created a design challenge, inviting the most creative minds in the field to maximize the user satisfaction. Together with NS the impact of active furniture design in real life situations was tested.
In 1947, scientists discovered physical stimulation influences the development of the brain. Providing the right types of stimulation to naturalize enclosures is called 'Environmental Enrichment'. One of the five elements you need to activate when you want to achieve enrichment is ‘motor’ or ‘movement’.
There are several studies showing there is a direct relation between body movements and emotions. Based on these studies a series of furniture objects was created making people more active while traveling by train.
Our experiment is find out if - by adding ‘movement’ to the train interior - people become more satisfied.
TESTING
When the Enriched Office in 2016 at Schiphol Airport Amsterdam, was designed, a constructive testing method was developed with Professor Jenny Morton from the University of Cambridge to understand emotions in a real-life situation. This method was partly used to execute this research on how a train interior influences people their mood while traveling by train.
Based on the most recent findings in neuro-science, we know environmental enrichment consists of the activation of five different informational pathways:
1. Motor: all information from our muscles
2. Visual: visual information related to
orientation in space and the perception of moving elements
3. Cognitive: including actions that requires skills and / or decisions
4. Somatosensory: all information detected via skin, muscles and joints
5. Circadian rhythms: information from light, nutrition and / or social interaction and alignment with inner biological clock
For NS we focussed on adding the element ‘motor’ into the train. The hypothesis was that by adding movement, people feel
happier during the train ride. We think movement may contribute to positive emotions because movement is one of the five elements of enrichment. Besides, Aalto University (2013) published a study on how full body movement relates to happiness.