This thesis aims to enhance wayfinding experiences for rail-air passengers at train stations, facilitating efficient and effective navigation during the initial phase of their journey. By improving wayfinding at train stations, this project seeks to promote multimodal travel, particularly the use of trains as a sustainable alternative to short-haul flights. This research contributes to the European Green Deal's objective of reducing transport emissions by 90% by 2050 (EU Action, n.d.).

This research process follows the double diamond model as shown in figure 0.0 (Design Council, 2005). This structured approach consists of 4 phases: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver. The ‘Discover’ phase involves the study of literature, existing practices, field research, and journey mapping to gain an understanding of the context. The ‘Define’ phase involves analyzing the rich data & insights from the previous phase to find the gap and define the design direction. For this thesis, the discover & define phase was repeated twice- first to identify the gap in wayfinding & rail-air journeys and second focused on a case study of KLM Air&Rail, to identify specific wayfinding challenges faced by their passengers at Brussel Zuid train station. The ‘Develop’ phase involved an iterative ideation process. The ‘Deliver’ phase involved an iterative concept testing.

The final design is a signage that allows KLM Air&Rail passengers at Brussels Zuid train station to begin their wayfinding journey confidently and navigate to the KLM Air France Air&Rail terminal in a composed manner. By enhancing the wayfinding experience for the first phase of their rail-air journey, KLM Air&Rail passengers will have a more positive perception of the overall Air&Rail service provided by KLM.

International train travel could serve as a more sustainable alternative to flying, especially for short distance journeys up to 750 km. Though both forms of transport have negative impacts, the environmental costs of travelling by train are significantly lower than travelling by plane (European Environmental Agency, 2021). Therefore, the European Union, governments, environmentalists and railway companies see great value in promoting train travel over flying for short distance journeys (Ministry of IenW, 2022).

In order to further promote this transition, a couple of action points have been identified by Donners (2018) to improve international train travel, ticketing being one of them. Unlike booking a flight ticket - which can be done within just a few clicks - finding, comparing, and booking a train ticket has proven to be a more challenging task. Recent research conducted by the University of St. Pölten in Austria (Preslmayr, 2022) revealed that one third of travellers are unable to complete their booking, highlighting the difficulty of this process. In order to promote the transition from air to rail for short distance journeys, the bookability of international train tickets in Europe needs to be improved.

It is difficult to change a complex system such as the international railway industry, but we can help travellers navigate it. This project aims to do that by redesigning a booking platform and app that support holiday travellers when booking and potentially rescheduling their international train journey in Europe with an intuitive booking process that provides clarity and guidance at every step leaving them feeling confident and excited about their journey.

An iterative design process led to the final design proposal. Created to be intuitive, supportive, adaptive and exciting, this redesign booking platform aims to ensure that every traveller, regardless of their prior travel experience, can easily book a suitable train ticket, leaving them feeling confident and excited about their journey ahead. The booking platform was designed to align with the user needs and decision making patterns. Core features to support this include route characteristics, transfer alternatives and search filters. A travel app was redesigned to complement the booking platform, creating a bridge between the booking process and the train journey. In case disruption does occur, the travellers are supported by the travel app that provides clear guidance for how they can continue their journey.

The user evaluation of the final design proposal shows promising results with an excellent score on its usability according to the adjective rating scale of Bangor et al. (2009) and positive responses from participants. To facilitate this redesigned user journey, some supportive processes need to be improved, including open communication and collaboration between carrier and ticket distributors, updated route information database and an EU wide disruption protocol.

All in all, it is difficult to change a large complex system such as the international train industry, but we can help travellers navigate it. While the railway system is expected to evolve, impactful changes may take time. Meanwhile, optimising services through redesigns can have a significant immediate effect on the travellers experience and provide access to a sizable potential customer segment. Therefore, further exploring and implementing the designs as proposed in this report will improve the bookability of international train tickets in Europe.

Introduction
An assignment for Royal Schiphol Group, the project aimed to create a future vision that aligns all stakeholders towards a shared ambition to transform towards a multi modal hub as well as identify user needs that could facilitate new strategic initiatives for Schiphol group as a MMH.
In order to create the future vision a trend analysis and co-creation workshop was conducted that resulted in insights such as; 1) Water Natives due to increase in water levels, redefined work culture due to remote workers and 3) isolation over socialisation. Stakeholders reacted to these trends which led to insights such as; 1) People will remain resilient, 2) congestion might increase if not dealt with properly and 3) the future is experience economy.

Future Vision
Based on the research, a future vision for RSG’s MMH was created that states, ‘‘By 2050, Schiphol Group should envision, a flex mobility ecosystem that adapts to situations and user needs resulting in an antifragile way of working. The goal is to create tailored services and seamless experiences for users and passengers. The ambition is achieved by increasing proactive collaboration, on time network performance, and decentralizing hub functions.’

Strategic Solutions
The future vision can be achieved through strategic solutions such as;
1) Preparing change by creating a team of strategic advisors.
2) Proposing initiatives significant to transformation of a MME by creating a digital platform.
3) Facilitating change by creating a better experience for their users through pop up experiences. In the process learning and gathering new insights that could lead to expanding into new opportunity windows.
These solutions perfectly fit RSG’s overall vision of having the most sustainable and high quality airports in Europe. It also allows RSG to implement multi modality correctly, anticipate the transformation of the mobility industry and design a user centred multi modal ecosystem.

Royal Schiphol Group is the overarching organisation of multiple airports, among which Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. As the world around these airports is quickly changing with aviation under pressure, and a huge amount of new potential modalities, RSG is in need of an approach to deal with new kinds of modalities. This project was executed for the Innovation Hub, part of the department of Strategy & Airport Planning withing RSG. The initial assignment was to find a way in which RSG could identify and select modalities with potential. 

During the project, first the context was outlined by analysing the organisation of RSG and the environment in which they are operating. After this literature concerning open innovation has been compared to the way RSG handles external innovations at the moment, as this is how RSG can strengthen their MMH position further. It appeared that currently RSG misses a structured approach to handle new modalities. RSG therefore needs a strategy and a corresponding way to assess innovative modalities. An extra exploration was done, consisting of literature, interviews, observations and internal documents, which led to design principles for the strategy and the toolkit (wat waren deze).

In the end a strategy is developed in which 4 steps (identifying, identified, assessing, choosing) were included. In this strategy RSG is encouraged to connect more to the world of mobility and its future with the use of an orchestrator, positioned in-between the innovation hub and a newly acquired scouting team. Executing these steps would lead to a decision on the fifth step: engaging. In the developped strategy, RSG shifts from reacting on modalities to proactively monitoring the world of mobility by providing structure in searching. In this way they can connect to this future world of mobility and by regularly assessing modalities, Schiphol can quickly change direction if necessary. Within the strategy, an orchestrator is present to lead the strategy. The orchestrator will be responsible for setting the exact strategy within the MMH direction, as he or she knows what happens in the market and within Schiphol. He or she will be building bridges between RSG and start-ups.

For the assessment, a toolkit is developed in which the factors which influence the potential of a modality at Schiphol have been incorporated as well as the proposed way of working in the strategy. This is reflected in a card deck that should be used to assess modalities, and canvases that should be used to document the session and ensure follow up of the session is assured. Herein, the goal of the toolkit is to facilitate a structured discussion concerning new modalities which can be used to substantiate decision making by RSG.

This report describes the entire process gone through to come to the final design. The final design is further elaborated on, an implementation plan is proposed and lastly a discussion and recommendations of the final design are provided, to provide directions in reaching its full potential.