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International Conference of Design, User Experience, and Usability

DUXU 2014: Design, User Experience, and Usability. Theories, Methods, and Tools for Designing the User Experience pp 217–228Cite as

Usability Evaluation of Mobile Passenger Information Systems

  • Conference paper

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNISA,volume 8517)

Abstract

Public transportation becomes increasingly diverse because of innovation in transport modalities and a large number of service providers. For facilitating passengers’ comfort, intermodal passenger information systems are required, which combine data of different providers and transport modes. Therefore, context sensitive mobile applications are promising solutions to supporting passengers at every stage of their trip. Crucial for the success of these applications is their usability. In this paper, a prototype of an intermodal passenger information system is investigated in a usability evaluation and tested in comparison to the leading mobility application in Germany. Both iOS apps were evaluated with a questionnaire using the system usability scale (SUS) in a lab setting (n=20) and in a field test (n=20). Additionally, participants of the field test were interviewed retrospectively about app and setting. The user feedback was beneficial in learning about users’ expectations towards information retrieval procedure in and functionalities of a passenger information system. The usability evaluation basically revealed easy to improve usability problems, but also a trust issue and the need for a participatory component in public transportation, probably by integrating social media.

Keywords

  • mobile applications
  • smartphone app
  • travel information
  • passenger information system
  • usability
  • evaluation methods

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Textlinguistics & Technical Communication/ HCI Center, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

    Shirley Beul-Leusmann & Eva-Maria Jakobs

  2. Communication Science/ HCI Center, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

    Shirley Beul-Leusmann & Martina Ziefle

  3. Information Systems, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

    Christian Samsel, Maximilian Wiederhold & Karl-Heinz Krempels

Authors
  1. Shirley Beul-Leusmann
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  2. Christian Samsel
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  3. Maximilian Wiederhold
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  4. Karl-Heinz Krempels
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  5. Eva-Maria Jakobs
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  6. Martina Ziefle
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc., Euclid Avenue, Suite 1F, 1196, 94708-1640, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Aaron Marcus

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Beul-Leusmann, S., Samsel, C., Wiederhold, M., Krempels, KH., Jakobs, EM., Ziefle, M. (2014). Usability Evaluation of Mobile Passenger Information Systems. In: Marcus, A. (eds) Design, User Experience, and Usability. Theories, Methods, and Tools for Designing the User Experience. DUXU 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8517. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07668-3_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07668-3_22

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-07667-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-07668-3

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