The first mixed reality transport app and portal built around what older adults and vulnerable passengers actually needed, not around the technology making it possible.
In a world obsessed with young, digitally native consumers, 14 million older adults were being failed by products built around technology rather than people. Train travel and navigation were a major source of anxiety for this audience. The tools designed to help them were built by engineers, for engineers.
Briteyellow had the vision and the patents; indoor positioning, AR navigation & dynamic routing. What they needed was to make their product work for the people it was meant to serve. As Design Manager at Design Age Institute, Royal College of Arts, I guided this tech-first team through four rounds of user research with older adults. Shifting their mindset from product-out to user-in, and redesigning the app and service web portal around what people actually needed to feel reassured, empowered, and supported during a train journey.
The work secured six commercial bids with Transport for Wales and a further ten stations across the UK.
*Some of this work is under NDA and cannot be shared in public. Below is an insight of the approach, learnings and outcomes. Please get in touch for more information. Over time, more can be found on Briteyellow. & Briteway.
Outcomes
• Secured six commercial bids secured with Transport for Wales
• Ten additional UK stations in pipeline for rollout
• App redesigned, end-to-end across full-day research workshops
• Future design and research budget formally allocated within the Briteyellow team
• Praised for inclusivity and innovation within a traditionally conservative industry
What I did
• Coached a tech-first team through a user-centred design approach.
• Shortlisted external design support, sending six briefs, interviewing three agencies, and challenging the team's final choice when I felt it prioritised brand/UI over product experience
• Led four full-day user research workshops with 6–12 older adult participants each. Defining observation activities, ensuring unbiased questioning, and translating insights into design decisions
• Led end-to-end design. From discovery and architecture through to accessibility, brand visual language, and tone of voice
• Acted as the design expert across three collaborating teams, keeping momentum against tight commercial bid deadlines
Briteyellow's strategic business goal was to get their solution adopted nationwide by every operator. The first objective, was to build a business case for the Department of Transport Wales, and the Rail Delivery Group.
The challenges were significant
• Balancing technical performance with user needs
• Strained relationships between stakeholders
• Integrating three separate software platforms,
• Meeting an accelerated timeline driven by commercial bid requirements.
Designing to improve lives of the older adults and the vulnerable
Briteyellow were keen to move fast. Together we drafted a project plan covering contractual milestone deliverables, design activities, allocated budgets, and signed agreements, giving both RCA & Briteyellow teams the clarity to move quickly without losing sight of what we were trying to achieve. To succeed, we needed to gain momentum fast in the first four weeks.
Briteyellow excelled technically as a team, but had limited expertise in user experience, user research, and brand positioning. I shortlisted external design support, to balance their capabilities. Together we sent out six design briefs and interviewed three design agencies.
After careful review, the team selected an agency based on availability and its brand strategy focus to aid their business case. I pushed back. I believed the product needed AR and digital UX capability as much as brand work. Prioritising the brand strategy & positioning over the product experience was the wrong order of operations. I proposed a strategy: "build a great product experience first (with usability and accessibility), then develop the brand after". The team heard the argument and agreed to amend UX focus and bring in contractors for the digital AR capability later in the project.
Assembling Team Roles
With time used to get external support signed and on board, we were now under tighter deadlines! To help, our approach included both face-to-face and online interactions, alongside prescheduled design and user research workshops. I implemented weekly catch-ups across all three teams and continuous dialogue to ensure progress.
Project Plan
Before any workshops, I immersed myself in the existing product. A critical audit of what was in place and why. What I found was concerning. The technical language and navigation structure were deeply unfriendly. End users were given little context, no reassurance, and no wayfinding to support their intentions. All while trying to plan a journey or navigate a busy train station as a vulnerable person with limited mobility and competing distractions.
Quick initial tests confirmed it: people described the experience as "technical" or "unusable." Many were anxious they would fail at some point in the process.
The problem wasn't a missing feature. It was a fundamental lack of empathy for the person on the other end of the screen.
I took the approach of coaching the Briteyellow team, shifting their mindsets from, tech first to human first. A key focus of mine was to ensure unbiased questioning for each of the 4 workshops. Rephrasing binary yes/no questions into "why," "how," or "tell me..." prompts to help us explore the problem space.
Key Questions Included:
• Tell me a typical situation/scenario where you would want or need to use Briteway?
• What kind of features or key activities would you like the product to prioritise?
• What did you think of the process of using AR?
• How did you find your experience of finding and navigating through all the features?
• Why did you make that action, what was your intention or expectation at that time?
• What barriers do you foresee in using this app more frequently?
This confirmed the need for clearer navigation and contextual guidance throughout. Users saw potential in the product only if it felt like a "Navigational Insight Tool" or "Knowledgeable Travel Companion."
Three core emotional needs emerged:
• Reassured: Reducing anxiety and stress by providing visibility of station layouts, platform locations, obstacle-free access routes, and crowd levels. No unmanned entrances or unexpected barriers.
• Empowered: Offer easy-to-digest information for confident, independent travel decisions.
• Supported: Providing tailored assistance for the journey with emergency connections readily available.
This first workshop also included word association activities to understand the emotional qualities the product needed to convey, recognising that how it felt was as commercially important as what it did.
People responded positively to the improved app architecture. However new findings emerged: people needed comprehensive travel information including platform arrival details and time estimates for changing platforms based on their specific accessibility needs.
Older adults were also keen on an in-app chat feature, particularly valuable for unmanned stations and for pre-arranging boarding ramps for wheelchair users on arrival.
The third session revealed something important: train travel held fundamentally different meanings for different people within the older adult audience. Those travelling with elderly parents had entirely different needs from independent older adults, who in turn differed significantly from people who were largely home-bound.
This diversity created a real challenge in feature prioritisation and forced the team to get much clearer about which specific user they were designing for first.
The final workshop surfaced the commercial need for full software integration with further funds and developers. Despite best efforts, users still experienced inconsistent behaviour across the three merged platforms, Unity, Matterport, and Mapbox.
Button placements varied, UI patterns conflicted, and duplicated facility lists created confusion. The workshop also confirmed the critical real-life importance of step-free routing to reduce stress, since arrival platforms can change unexpectedly. The app needed advance alerts to re-route vulnerable users before they were caught in a difficult situation.
With four rounds of research informing every decision, I led the team through a structured define phase through several design tools and frameworks. My goal was to rapidly enable them to make design & product development decisions from the end user's perspective and ultimately develop an innovative solution addressing key user pain points.
Personas
I guided the team through persona creation. Identifying three behavioural variables to segment the older adult audience:
• Attitude towards travelling & exploring new places
• Home bound VS independent (limited mobility or restricted health)
• Comfort and exposure to new technologies
The team used their chosen persona consistently in discussions to steer alignment and develop genuine empathy for their user.
*Details intentionally blurred
Customer journey mapping
I led the team in mapping the full customer journey, simplified into five stages to keep it actionable and mentoring-friendly. The map quickly became the team's most referenced document during all technical build discussions, helping them self-identify risks to the customer journey for MVP before they became build problems.
*Details intentionally blurred
MVP prioritisation
I facilitated an MVP workshop using the MoSCoW method, (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won't Have) to bring focus to an expanding list of feature ideas emerging from discussions and to align the team on what the first commercial MVP release needed to deliver.
This aided scope creep and kept everyone focused while also comunicating in commercial bid a phased product build strategy.
*Details intentionally blurred
Site mapping
Lastly, I led creation of a site map visualising how users would navigate across the various product's screens. This became the most explicit shared document across all three teams, directly mitigating risk on project timelines and technology requirements throughout the build.
*Details intentionally blurred
Driven by user insights the app acritecture was restructured and divided the experience into two clear halves:
• Planning a journey: Everything related to researching, preparing, and exploring a train journey before leaving home
• Making a journey: Everything related to navigating a train station and managing the journey in real time
The app now began with a simple option enabling them to navigate between both halves.
Within each half, users could access video tours of a station, chat support, facilities information, ticket booking, and emergency contacts. Interactions were made consistent across both AR and UX functionality, giving users a sense of control and predictability throughout a process that could otherwise feel overwhelming. (Pic below)
Every screen was redesigned with accessibility as the primary constraint, not an afterthought. Larger touch zones, drop-down menus, increased typography, and commonly recognised icons were introduced throughout. High contrast text on plain light backgrounds kept focus on function. Activ Grotesk was chosen for its legibility, weight range, and compliance with accessibility guidelines across devices and browsers.
Future enhancements scoped for later releases included adaptable text sizing, voice commands, audio feedback, and haptic navigation, reducing the need to look at the screen while moving through a busy physical environment.
User response to the redesigned experience was clear:
"This is a step forward, a vast improvement on the previous version".
"The whole thing is 100% better and much more user-friendly."
"This feels like a higher standard product."
- Participant quotes
I contributed to guiding Briteyellow's brand strategy, directing their thinking on icons, colour palette, tone of voice, and interface components. Translating insights into action the product needed to feel like a companion, not a tool. A confident but approachable tone of voice. A contemporary, trustworthy sans serif font. UI elements and custom illustrations that highlighted human qualities, deliberately designed to avoid the visual clichés and negative stereotypes that can trigger anxiety or reinforce ageism in products for older adults.
The product is designed to be scalable and evolve over time after my involvement, with a future-proof roadmap of features that would truly elevate it.
The result was a product that placed the user's emotional, physical, and cognitive wellbeing at the centre. Providing reassurance throughout, with a later release adding 24-hour rail chat support across the full journey.
What this project demonstrated is that inclusive design isn't a constraint; it's a competitive advantage. By designing genuinely for older adults rather than assuming their needs, Briteyellow built something that stood out in a sector where most solutions are designed for engineers and operators, not passengers (end users).
It also reinforced something I've seen consistently: when a technical team is coached to put the user first, the product doesn't just improve, the team's relationship with their own work changes. They stop defending features and start questioning them. That shift is where real progress begins.
