Yatri Sahayak
Winner in Interaction Design Category | D' Source Corona Design Challenge
Collaborators: Surya Sathi Roy | Nayan Bhatt
Winning entry in IxD category from 2116 entries with over 3000 participants from 54 countries.
D'Source Corona Design Challenge organised by IDC, IIT Bombay (in collaboration with MHRD, Govt. of India; International Council of Design; BHU; DoD, IIT Guwahati, and World Design Organisation)
Yatri Sahayak
यात्रीगण कृपया ध्यान दें
Domain:
Service Design | Systems
Collaborators:
Surya Sathi Roy
Nayan Bhatt
Year:
2020
Role:
Indian Railways has been serving as the backbone of the country for around 168 years. It caters to 23 million passengers/day and during the lockdown period, it has helped 6.3 million migrants get back to their families. But to control the crowd while maintaining social distancing is another ball game altogether. Our project, Yatri Sahayak has been carried out to cater to crowd management and queueing by tapping into the potential area of Luggage Management System. 'Yatri Sahayak' has a large-scale impact on the areas of crowd and queue management, safety and security of passengers/IR employees, digital disruption, assistance & accessibility services, luggage management, and also job security for coolies.
Keywords
Research,
Design, Prototyping,
Testing
Indian Railways, Service Design, User Research, Strategy, Large-scale systems, Luggage Management, Freight Management, User Experience, IIT Bombay, IDC.
About IRCTC
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is a subsidiary of the Indian Railways that handles the catering, tourism, and online ticketing operations of the railway's department, with around 5,50,000 to 6,00,000 bookings every day. The first e-ticketing Android app, the “IRCTC Connect” was launched in 2014. According to IRCTC, the new IRCTC Rail Connect app has been downloaded by more than 3 crore users and since January 2017, as many as 14 crore bookings have been made from it to date.
Understanding the problem
In order to have efficient crowd management, a standard operating procedure (SoP) has been issued by the Ministry of Health Administration (MHA), Gov. of India. Even after its implementation, there have been issues with passenger luggage where either long queues have been seen at the cloakrooms or the passengers have been seen lugging their heavy luggage on the platform resulting in space constraints while trying to maintain social distancing.
Services for Passengers
Apart from the general services that a railway provides to its passengers, Indian Railways has a concierge service which is a booking solution for porters and cabs for passengers through online or IVRS mediums. But because of lack of publicity and issues with discoverability on the website and application lead to its failure as a service. Yatri Mitra Sewa has started their own service to facilitate access to wheelchairs, battery-operated cars, or porter services only in the major stations for specially-abled and old passengers. This service is not available online for prebooking on the Indian Railways platform, however, the user can pre-book e - wheelchair on IRCTC Tourism. Yatri Mitra Sewa service can be booked on the IRCTC e-ticketing website and 139 Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) and Short Message Service (SMS) or through a mobile.
Classification of Users
Diving deeper
To understand more closely the issues that the passengers face, we conducted a few user interviews across various cities in India to understand their thought processes, experiences, feelings, views, and insights about Indian Railways. Our users' involved first-time passengers, regular passengers, students, employees, senior citizens, specially-abled passengers in the station (Pune, Nagpur, Bombay, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi & Bangalore). Although the coverage was big our sample size was quite small owing to the fact that we were conducting our interviews when we were traveling across these places over a period of 1 year or so. We also got an opportunity to interview the stakeholders and capture some insights out of it. Our Stakeholders Includes Coolies (Porters), Luggage Room Attendants, Security Personnel and Waiting Room Attendants,
Image Credit: PTI
Surveys
Apart from this, 3 rounds of surveys were conducted over a period of time. The survey along with the in-person and on-call interviews which included 265+ participants helped us in gaining a lot of insights which led to the design solution of Yatri Sahayak.
Passenger Journeys
Passenger Painpoints
Stakeholder Painpoints
Everyone has baggage!
Even though we deny
Insights and Opportunity Areas
Ideation Phase
To ensure a faster and leaner way of implementation, our proposed system supports the currently functioning IRCTC app infrastructure. We have extended the present IRCTC application to accomodate services like Luggage Management and Assistance Services known collectively as Yatri Sahayak. Yatri Sahayak is a platform where passengers can book their baggages and avail services like wheelchair/ assistance for old and specially abled from the station kiosk.
Ideation- Yatri Sahayak Journey
Sameera Sheikh, a 55 year old school principal had to cancel her trip to Vellore CMC Hospital for her octogenarian mother’s yearly treatment. Now, with Unlock 1.0 intiated by Gov of India, she has been able to book tickets for herself. Though there is scare and skepticism at the back of her head, she is kind of relieved with the precautions being taken by Indian Railways. But, lugging the luggage to the station, haggling with a coolie at close contact, getting assistance for her mother and standing at the queue at the cloakroom always gives her the jitters.
But what if these things were not supposed to be an issue. Let’s travel with her and get to witness a hassle free and totally safe experience with Yatri Sahayak.
Passenger Interactions
Yatri Sahayak services integrated with IRCTC Rail Connect app.
Click on the above link to test out the prototype of Yatri Sahayak Passenger facing UI
Stakeholder Interactions
Coolies or Sahayaks are a part of the system to help in providing services availed by the users like Luggage Transport, Special Services from point A to B inside the station. The following screens help the coolies to keep track of their assigned luggage and special services. In case they do not have a smartphone, they can get access to basic info on classic phones as well.
In case they do not have a smartphone, they can get access to basic info on classic phones as well through SMS and IVRS
Kiosk Interactions
Yatri Sahayak kiosks help receive luggage, tag them and send them out to cloakrooms and departure platforms via coolies/ porters while making sure to have control safety and less crowding.
Yatri Sahayak Kiosk
Future Aspects
Yatri Sahayak with its versatility can be further incorporated into systems pertaining to Air and Roadways Travel and Commercial Freight which is ongoing currently.
