Taking Risks, Earning Trust and Including Co-Workers: User-Centred Design at Deutsche Bahn Operations

Start with a small thing, and it will grow bigger: Andreas Bürgler, Head of Deutsche Bahn Station&Service AG (Operations), talks about introducing user-centred design methods in his department – with a 200-participant design thinking sprint and a re-designed service counter as a lighthouse project.

In 2016, Andreas Bürgler heard the term “design thinking” being tossed around left and right. “There was a lot of discussion about design thinking, everybody used it as a buzzword, and I felt that few people really knew what it actually meant. I saw some charts, but that was too little for me. I wanted to really learn it myself.” During a three-day Open Course in design thinking at the HPI Academy with Katrin Lütkemöller-Shaw, he realised that this way of user-centred working inspired his “mind and heart”: “This was my thing: to work on topics that are interesting for the users and help them. To build a prototype quickly, and to learn what fits and doesn’t fit immediately.” At the same time, interviewing real users came as an unusual experience: “Having this direct, immediate contact with the user was a challenge”, Bürgler says, and adds with a smile: “You are suddenly talking to the customer – alert!”

The Need to Innovate

Topics of disruptive innovation have already become central under former DB CEO Rüdiger Grube. Bürgler sees the necessity to change DB Operations: “We have to digitalise, like everyone else”, Bürgler says and continues: “We don’t work user-centred enough.” As an infrastructure provider for train stations, Deutsche Bahn has a monopoly position in Germany. This can make it difficult to underline the importance of focusing on users. “I see a lot of potential to improve – both in quality and cost efficiency.”

Humans will always play a big role in Deutsche Bahn’s travel chain, though: “We are the first smile of Deutsche Bahn. With 70 percent of tickets being bought online, the service employee at the train station is most probably the first human contact for the customer.” Here, they can make a good first impression and help customers. “That is irreplaceable.”

The Design Thinking Sprint

After his introductory course, it was a clear-cut case for Bürgler: He was buzzing about design thinking. ”The key question was: How can I manage to transfer this fire to my employees? I had to reach the hearts and minds of my staff.“ He tried to explain design thinking to colleagues, on a Saturday, in four hours, showing some charts – “and that did not work out. You’ll get an overview of the method, but you won’t ‘inhale’ it.” Nonetheless, his management was ready and open to explore new ways of working. To acquaint them with the method and the mindset, Bürgler invited the team to a two-day design thinking workshop at the HPI Academy. The next step: introducing 200 employees of DB Operations to design thinking at a general meeting. Every year, the general meeting sported a similar agenda: “The board talks – Bürgler talks – panel discussion – standard workshops”, Bürgler says jokingly. “We wanted to change that.” The motto of the sprint: “Lasst uns etwas Neues probieren – let’s try something new.” HPI Academy Program Manager Flavia Bleuel took on the mission. This meant two experiments at once, according to Bleuel. Experiment number one: “We brought 200 people into contact with design thinking – with the help of seven HPI Academy Lead Coaches and enlisted DB assistant coaches, who we trained one day before the event. Experiment number two: to dive into six different challenges with 33 teams and 30 coaches.”

To prepare the event, the program manager had to consider teams, coaches, space and challenges.

The difficult part of going through a design thinking project starts with phrasing the challenge, or problem. “We held a phone conference with the divisional directors to find the challenges which could best be addressed by design thinking. For the executives, it was interesting to figure out how to phrase these challenges in an open and un-biased way. For example: The question ‘How can we create new KPIs for the area XYZ?’ is not appropriate for a DT sprint. It limits the solution space, is not user-focused, and leaves no space for questioning whether the resulting KPI is the right solution. There is no problem in there”, Bleuel explains.

The organisers phrased six challenges in total, three of which focused on troublesome experiences of travellers. In order to show the participants that design thinking can likewise be helpful to finding solutions for their internal challenges, we also focused on ”internal users“, DB operations co-workers in all areas. All 200 participants were divided into the six topical areas in teams of five or six.

Participants came from office locations all over Germany and didn’t necessarily know one another. Therefore, the program manager shaped teams with a few factors in mind. While paying attention to a diverse composition, she also considered how teams might be structured to work fruitfully together after the sprint. Flavia Bleuel put some “buddies” into teams – participants who knew each other, or who worked on similar topics. Thereby, they tried to ensure that team members felt comfortable in the groups and that projects could be continued after the sprint.

To equip every team with a supportive design thinking facilitator, 30 coaches were needed. Bleuel decided to bring just seven HPI Academy Coaches into the team and to appoint DB assistant coaches for the job to keep the expenses manageable. These were DB operations management employees who had already participated in a design thinking training session. To prepare them for their coaching session, the HPI Academy Coaching Team conducted a “challenge and facilitation fast forward” on the first day of the workshop.

Preparing the design thinking coaches for their first workshop facilitation.

“In addition to the training, we provided them with a facilitation clipboard”, Bleuel explains. The clipboard contained facilitation notes, background information on methods, explanations for using templates and advice on visualising content on the whiteboards – a helpful guide through their first design thinking coaching experience.

Fixing the material and space requirements beforehand with the conference hotel raised some eyebrows and left some question marks. Flavia Bleuel did a detailed plan concerning space and material. “We loaded all the material on euro pallets and gave lists to each team.” Unpacking the material seemed “a bit like Christmas” – with some bargaining included. “Do you really need so many pens? You can have the stapler if I get one of your pairs of scissors.”

The conference hotel spaces were transformed into seven flexible design thinking working spaces, with nine teams working in parallel in the largest. In the evening, one workspace had to be retransformed into a space for a gala dinner with a dancefloor: the coaching team and the hotel staff moved away the team spaces of 18 teams in the evening and reassembled them in the morning – a proper agile workspace in a traditional conference hotel.

Timeboxing is a challenge in any workshop, but to accompany 200 participants through their projects in the set time frame poses an additional challenge. Astonishingly, the teams finished exactly on time – and in full size: “Usually, these major firm events lose a few participants during the day, who try to avoid some of the talks. But I had the feeling that we started with 200 people and ran through the finishing line with 199. The participants were disciplined, motivated and full of energy”, Bleuel says.

Andreas Bürgler was “very proud of ourselves and the organisation team. In the beginning, some co-workers were very critical of the idea, but in the end we can say that about 80% of the participants were enthusiastic.” He was impressed by the way his employees worked in the open space of a design thinking workshop: “It is almost scary to realise how much of our employees’ energy and potential for creativity and innovation we are not using. But that’s not only the case for us, but for other corporations as well.”

DB Infopoint 4.0

During the sprint, teams further developed ideas for the new DB Infopoint 4.0 in the stations. The starting point was the planned redesign of the service counter. “We decided not to do it in the old way: we lock our architects in, they design something pretty that we like, and then customers and employers say ‘I can’t use this’”, Bürgler says. In an open innovation approach, the project team gathered the feedback of colleagues and external entrepreneurs during a session in the DB Mindbox. They made two pitches for the design and the user experience of the service counter. During field research the design team realised that many processes were analogue, forcing customers to fill in paperwork, and that queues built up because customers asked the same simple questions again and again. With some wild ideas coming back, Bürgler felt it was too early to prototype on the streets with cardboard. The team looked for a workshop studio and found an empty train station building in Wannsee, on the outskirts of Berlin. Here, they conducted workshops with different user groups to learn about their needs and continuously improve their prototypes: with train travellers, co-workers, different associations and wheelchair users.

During field research, the team realised that queues often built up at the service counters because customers asked the same simple questions again and again.
Some service counters did not seem very approachable.
For their prototyping phase, the team looked for a workshop studio and found an empty train station building in Wannsee.
The team transformed the empty space into a creative workshop.
A set designer built the advancing prototypes in cardboard.
The team had eight different prototype generations – each improved with more feedback.
The prototypes were tested by real employees and real users.
Now, prototype #8 is an artefact in the Wannsee workshop studio and the new DB Info Point is in the rollout phase.

Bürgler hired a set designer from the Deutsche Oper (the German national opera) to build the advancing prototypes in cardboard for each iteration. In the end, they had eight different prototype generations – each improved with more considerations and feedback. “To me, two aspects of the final prototype are especially important”, Bürgler says. “They developed successively within the design process.”

First: on the left side, a subsidence enables service employees to talk to wheelchair users at eye level. During their journey, the design team learned about the importance of creating a space that allows communication in a normal table setting, at the same height.

Second: the service point combines a self-service area and large info displays with employee support. Customers have the choice to inform themselves or queue for employee support.

The eighth prototype was presented at the “product conference”, an annual event where Deutsche Bahn presents new product developments to the press and public. There, the team tested the service counter prototype with customers and co-workers. “I experienced something interesting here, something that I had underestimated”, Bürgler recalls. The design team did user tests and closed the counter in between testing – which resulted in negative reactions from the company, complaining about the phases of dormancy. “I realised that I forgot to take the corporation and the executive board with us on this path – to explain what it means to do prototyping, or live prototyping.” Many people were under the impression that they were looking at a finished product, which had to be accessible all the time. “This is where we learned something, and I would do it differently the next time.”

From the old service counters...
...to the new DB Information 4.0 - including large information screens and wheelchair access.
Users may also choose to look for information themselves at touchscreen counters.

Now, prototype #8 is an artefact in the Wannsee workshop studio and the new DB Info Point is in the rollout phase. The first redesigned counter was constructed in Nürnberg. Here, the team co-created a nationwide usage concept of the Info Point: how should the initial phase look and be handled? “We didn’t just want to put a piece of furniture there and leave it like that. We wanted to put life into the piece of furniture”, Bürgler explains. Lessons will continue to be learned during the rollout in 100 train stations until 2020.

The new DB Information 4.0 consists of several redesigned elements, including several digital solutions for customer processes.

Other Projects

How to receive direct customer feedback at train stations? When Bürgler pitched his thoughts at a discussion evening with start-ups, he was quite proud of his idea to have customers photograph QR codes and fill in their opinions in a submittal field. “Then one of the young colleagues said: ‘QR codes are old school. You have to use a messenger service, like WhatsApp’”, Bürgler says. Using WhatsApp for service feedback? The resistance in the company was massive: “The data privacy people beat a path to our doors but we managed to do a pilot test and this was received very well by the travellers.” In this test, customers at train stations were encouraged to send a WhatsApp message to a Deutsche Bahn number if they had seen any dirty spots or trash. In return, cleaning personnel would be informed about the untidy areas and sent to clean them. If they were interested, users could receive a notification as soon as the cleaning was finished, and then grade their satisfaction with the cleanliness. Combined with a cheeky marketing campaign – slogans such as “You can confide in us about the dirty stuff” or “Dirty talk for clean train stations” – the service took off, with more and more travellers using it.

... who were encouraged to send a WhatsApp message if they had seen any dirty spots.
Cheeky slogans - such as “You can confide in us about the dirty stuff” or “Dirty talk for clean train stations” - caught the attention of travellers...

“Feedback was so positive that we decided to start the service at 80 big train stations in Germany”, Bürgler says, with plans to extend it to 240 train stations by March 2018. The idea became an ‘export hit’: The urban train services (S-Bahn) in Berlin adopted the idea, and urban train services in Frankfurt and München are planning to introduce it as well. “Previously, it wouldn’t have been possible to establish this in a corporation, with WhatsApp being perceived as something bad, something evil”, Bürgler says. “But we realised the growing role of messenger services, and that we could use them to communicate with our customers.”

At around 4400 small train stations in Germany, digital passenger information screens (“Dynamischer Schriftanzeiger”) provide information for travellers. After their design thinking sprint in Weimar, DB Operations started a redesign process for these screens, interviewing 150 customers in two weeks and building prototypes. “Previously, this wouldn’t have been possible – the colleagues wouldn’t have dared to do these interviews, and they wouldn’t have had the possibility to do the project!”, Bürgler says. For the next phase of building more advanced prototypes, the teams require more funding from the top. “This is the challenge – we are talking about 6500 screens in small train stations. Here, every Euro counts, multiplied by 6500. It’s about having much more output with the same investment”, Bürgler explains. This could mean more information for the customer at the same production cost.

During a two-day board meeting, executives wanted to discuss DB Operations management and invited employees to relate their experiences. An employee complained about never-ending meetings with little effect on their everyday working life. As a result, the team developed a ‘meeting shield’ – built on the motto: ‘The best meeting is the meeting that doesn’t take place’. They developed ideas to identify the real value of a meeting, and consequently ideas for a Meeting Target Checklist prototype emerged. The person organising a meeting needs to fill in a checklist: Is there an agenda? What is the goal? And what is the user benefit? The employees can decide whether or not to take part. “The effect was that meetings became shorter”, Bürgler says. “And sometimes I have to wreck my brain before calling a meeting: what’s the goal, how do my employees benefit from this? Does this meeting even make sense?”

Starting a workshop without an already fixed agenda: such approaches are not surprising to DB Operations employees any more. “Everyone explained which topics are important to them; we clustered those and structured the day together. Then, the relevant experts offered short workshops. In this way, we went through an agenda structured by colleagues for colleagues”, Bürgler says.

Implementing Innovation Projects: The Topic of Trust

Trying to implement innovation projects can be frustrating. Excitement for creative method often stalls on the way up. To gain the freedom and support for conducting user-centred processes in a big corporation, Bürgler underlines the importance of trust from the board during the DB Info 4.0 project. How to gain, and maintain, this trust?

Inclusion	“We included the board members – they saw the pitches, visited some of the workshops”, Bürgler explains. They included co-workers as well by inviting and considering different people from the department, they gained ambassadors all over the organisation. One staff member discovered a little detail that she had suggested in the pilot version of the DB Info 4.0 and was happy: “She said: ‘Hey, you actually implemented this!’ These are the kind of messages that we can advance through videos and internal communication”, Bürgler says. Usually, with such a project, you can only lose. You will always do ‘something wrong’. But for us it worked out, because we included board members and co-workers in the process. Not everyone can be 100% satisfied about the outcome, but we definitely found the best common denominator.”
Regular Updates	“We gave regular updates and informed the board about our progress, sometimes ‘live’. I knew there would be some curiosity – ‘what are they doing in this workshop?’ – and I conveyed the impression that I myself have trust in the design team.” In this way, the board kept the impression that things were developing in the right direction.
Responsibility for Risks	“At one point, we stood in front of a cardboard prototype and had to decide: do we really want to present this at a public event in autumn? To make this decision – okay, we’ll do this – has a lot to do with leadership, with taking responsibility for the possible risks of failing.”
The power of the customer’s opinion	“To convince the board members, you need the sheer power of the user’s opinion, of the customer’s opinion. If you can say: ‘This product is for the users, for the co-workers and for the unions’, nobody feels like saying ‘do it differently anyway!’

After the Workshop: User-centered product development at DB Operation

What changed in DB Operations after the design sprint? “The post-it amount has risen massively”, Bürgler says with a smile. He has also noticed changes in the way his co-workers approach new styles of working. Several new projects have started with employees from DB Operations (see box). These teams are newly assembled with employees from all parts of Deutsche Bahn, IT experts, civil engineers and so on. “You can see that my Operations co-workers go in there with a design spirit, that they are open to new ideas.” The department is on its way to establishing a product management, but there is still a lot of work to do. “At the moment, we do it ‘from hand to mouth’ – we always have to request funds for product development. We aren’t as well positioned yet as we should be.”

As an executive, you cannot simply wait for your company to start implementing such processes. You just have to start yourself. Start with a small topic, a small project, and it will grow bigger.

Luckily, Andreas Bürgler is not alone with his aspirations in Deutsche Bahn: “There is a club called ‘Querdenker/Andersmacher’ (‘think laterally/do it differently’), and the name says it all.” In this club, employees and executives from all levels who attracted attention through their projects or ideas exchange thoughts and connect. “This was good to see: Hey, you are not alone and there’s nothing wrong with you – you are on the right side!”, Bürgler says. “As an executive, you cannot simply wait for your company to start implementing such processes. You just have to start yourself. Start with a small topic, a small project, and it will grow bigger and bigger. And then you won’t be alone any more.”

Service innovation: Read about #designthinking at @DB_Bahn Operations! Click To Tweet