Deutsche Bahn: Bahnhof Live App (Railway station live app)
5,400 train stations and an app that knows them all.
In contrast to Swedish furniture stores, German stations are all architecturally unique. Usually, travellers are not familiar with them so initially it is difficult for them to find their way around. Where can I get a quick cup of coffee? Where are the lifts and are they working? And can anyone tell me which part of the platform I have to stand on to be close to my reserved seat?
The Bahnhof Live App is there to answer all these questions as they arise so that travellers can be assisted and given a sense of security, especially when they are stressed. Apart from arrival and departure times, shopping facilities, restaurants and services at the station, or simply just the way to the platform, there are two important functions that are the focus of the app: The Wagenstandsanzeiger (carriage location indicator) and the function “Anlagenverfügbarkeit” (facility availability).
The latter is an important function for people with a lot of luggage, with a pram or pushchair or a disability. Bahnhof live tells them whether the escalator or the lifts are working or out of order. The lifts send the latest information directly to the app. Here the mobile network and the Internet of things work together and provide the user with important information.
Digital real time data like the carriage location indicator and connection mobility are at the heart of the app.
A useful complement to the DB Navigator
Alongside the DB Navigator, Bahnhof live provides additional features that are useful on every journey, such as indoor navigation at the train station. In an initial test run with several hundred beacons at Suedkreuz Station in Berlin, Scholz & Volkmer trialed a whole new level of this navigation, whereby the beacons send direct signals to the app, leading and guiding the user even more accurately.
The decisive feature of the app is that although every station works differently, it must have the same access to all of them so that the user can rely on it.
“It was and is a huge challenge to make these thousands of train stations with all their different requirements accessible via a standardised user experience.”
Judith Schütz, Creative Director S&V Berlin
