Passenger Reassurance at Euston

I helped shape the project’s direction by turning research evidence into clearer design priorities and decisions. My role was not limited to one deliverable, but to helping the team move from a broad brief towards a more focused, lower-attention service approach.

Euston is one of London’s busiest interchanges — rail, Underground, bus, taxi, and walking routes overlap, with the station recording over 40 million entries, exits and interchanges in 2024–25. [1]Office of Rail and RoadEstimates of station usageTable 1410 records London Euston at 40.25 million entries, exits and interchanges in 2024-25. But these systems rarely speak to each other, and information is scattered across signs, boards, announcements, and apps that don’t always agree.

Travellers sometimes find a flight easier than a train: an airport offers one clear journey, while a station often asks people to interpret many signs, boards, announcements, and apps at once. We began by asking why Euston felt difficult to navigate, especially for first-time and unfamiliar travellers in their first 20–30 minutes after arrival.

Before defining a design opportunity, we first looked for public signals around Euston: media reports, user complaints, safety concerns, overcrowding, station upgrades, and everyday passenger frustration. [2]London TravelWatchEuston station overcrowding is putting passengers in dangerPublic passenger-watchdog signal for crowding, safety concerns and the pressured concourse environment. Official improvement plans were also addressing passenger information, boarding, and circulation. [3]Network Rail / Department for TransportFive-point plan announced to improve customer experience at London Euston stationConfirms official attention to passenger experience, information, boarding and circulation at Euston. These signals showed that Euston was already experienced as a pressured and contested place, not simply a station with unclear signs.

We then carried out early field scans across Euston and nearby interchange moments, including the taxi loop, station entrances, escalators, concourse, and surrounding pedestrian routes. This early scan surfaced many possible problem directions — congestion, accessibility, taxi/bus coordination, confusing entrances, waiting spaces, and inconsistent information.

At the taxi loop, for example, most older and disabled travellers we spoke to said boarding itself worked — drivers put down a ramp — and that the real friction was a timing mismatch between taxis and passengers.

The value of this stage was not that it gave us the final answer. It helped us see the problem space was too broad, and that we needed a sharper service-design focus.

With the problem space mapped, we gathered evidence on the ground to see where uncertainty actually concentrated — combining direct observation, a passenger survey snapshot, and staff interviews rather than treating Euston as a set of isolated touchpoints.

After mapping the wider problem space and reviewing the field evidence, the project still needed a sharper focus. The project had started near wayfinding, but the evidence showed that clearer signs alone would not address the real uncertainty.

Many travellers could physically find signs and boards; what they could not resolve was whether to wait, move, trust a screen, ask staff, or follow the crowd.

The problem became less about navigation and more about orientation in time: helping unfamiliar travellers understand what matters now, before the platform announcement forces everyone to move at once.

We initially explored whether a light, non-competitive experience could make the unpredictable wait for a platform announcement feel calmer. Passengers would join through a QR code, enter a shared activity linked to their train, and receive official platform guidance as soon as it became available.

However, the prototype exposed a contradiction. In exploratory intercept feedback at Euston, passengers questioned whether engaging with the experience might distract them from announcements or delay their response when the platform appeared. A service intended to reduce uncertainty was asking people to decide whether it was safe to give their attention elsewhere.

Tutor critique also challenged our assumption that the problem needed another digital destination. We therefore moved away from designing an experience to occupy the wait and focused instead on protecting passengers’ attention.

The iteration shifted our goal from occupying the wait to helping passengers feel ready to act. The opportunity was a calm reassurance layer delivered through familiar travel touchpoints, using timely cues without overstating certainty.

The team proposed a station-run guidance layer that extends the existing ticket into the phone Wallet — the Wallet is only the delivery channel, not the product. It runs on rail data the station already has, so there’s no new app to download and nothing new to learn.

It’s a supporting layer, not a replacement for staff, signage, or announcements — a behavioural guidance layer, not a structural fix.

This project taught me that service design in a public system is not always about creating a new touchpoint. It is often about finding the smallest credible intervention inside an existing system, and making the moment before action feel less ambiguous.

As part of a four-person RCA × Arup team, my service-design contribution focused on turning field observations into the service logic: locating the moment of uncertainty, framing the passenger experience, and shaping how a digital–physical guidance layer could support both travellers and the wider station.

One limit I would address next: Calm Guidance runs through the phone Wallet. We discussed a printed alternative for passengers who don’t use smartphones, but it did not reach the final concept. A version that works without a phone is the next thing I would test, with the older and disabled passengers we met at the taxi loop.

Numbered references are included only for external context and public factual claims. Field observations, passenger responses, staff comments, and design decisions are treated as project evidence rather than external references.