Welcome Aboard
Working with people with dementia to improve assisted rail travel and reducing the anxiety of arriving at the station
“Being able to continue to get out and about enables you to remain connected with others and reduces isolation..”
Wendy Mitchel (Dementia Diaries)
Assisted rail travel enables many people to travel around the UK every year. According to the Office of Rail and Road, Passenger Assistance was booked 1.4 million times in 2016-17 and 63% of passengers said they could not have completed their journeys without it.
But sometimes the service doesn’t work so well. Delays and cancellations can disrupt Passenger Assist, potentially turning a journey into an anxious situation for passengers and staff alike. A lack of information or poor understanding of a person’s needs can prevent staff from offering the service they want to provide.
We brought people with dementia together with LNER rail staff to explore the use of Neatebox’s Welcome App to improve the passenger experience. We explored how passenger assist services currently work, how the app works and how it might help to improve assisted journeys.
By listening to each other and developing ideas together, we developed new features for ‘Welcome’ and discovered ways in which Passenger Assist can be improved locally.
The ‘Welcome’ Aboard project brought people with dementia together with train operator staff to explore how the Welcome app can improve the experience of assisted rail travel. By combining the experience of living and travelling with dementia and LNER’s experience of providing an assistance service we used and enhanced Neatebox’s Welcome app and imagined a better version of Passenger Assist.
We discussed rail journeys and how passenger assistance services can help. We visited Waverley station together to discover the environment and find where passenger assistance ‘lives’. We learned about the Welcome app and how to book a visit to the station…
We reflected on our various trips to the station and what could help. How could the app help? what would improve it further? What did we learn about passenger assist service?
As a result we developed an idea for a service that truly improves the experience for passengers and train operator staff alike.
The Team
Go Upstream brings people living with dementia together with people who provide travel and transport services, exploring ways in which journeys can become more enabling, putting the voice of people living with dementia at the heart of future mobility service design.
Neatebox’s mission is to lead society in becoming more inclusive to everyone, developing solutions that empower disabled people in their daily life and ease the pressure on those who are tasked to support them. We aim to reduce anxiety, increase social mobility and ultimately promote a very real change in society's attitude towards those who have so often been ignored.
Open Change support service providers and users to explore problems and solutions together using design tools
DEEP engages and empowers people living with dementia to influence attitudes, services and policies that affect their lives.
LNER operates the east coast mainline running between London and Scotland.
Welcome Aboard was funded and supported by the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB)
Our idea
What have we created? Well, it’s a service. A process that will help you to install and implement Welcome in your station or transport hub.
It brings you and your staff together with local people who live with dementia to work through the Welcome Aboard process. You’ll learn about the benefits of using Welcome and you’ll probably learn some valuable insights into how passenger assist could be improved locally. Simple changes such as improving signage and seating can make a difference to everyone.
We’ll help your staff to implement Welcome by using it together with people with dementia. You’ll also learn about living and travelling with dementia.
If it’s anything like our experience, you’ll have some fun and make some friends along the way.
This is how we develop better services, together.
Please get in touch to find out more.