How to take into account End Users needs: the Psycho-

Socio-Economic Dimensions of the Rouen-Paris

Commuter Population Experience

Jan-Cedric Hansen, Jean-Philippe Carpentier, Alain Caussieu,

Sebastien Modicom and Claude Hansen-Glize

Proceedings of the 37th ESReDA Seminar, Baden, Swiss, October 22-23, 2009
Proceedings of the 37th ESReDA Seminar, Baden, Swiss, October 22-23, 2009

How to take into account End Users needs: the Psycho-

Socio-Economic Dimensions of the Rouen-Paris
Commuter Population Experience

Jan-Cedric Hansen, Jean-Philippe Carpentier, Alain Caussieu, Sebastien

Modicom and Claude Hansen-Glize

StratAdviser Ltd
2 nd Floor, Berkeley Square House,
W1J 6BD, London, United Kingdom

Jean-Philippe Carpentier
Carpentier-avocats
10 rue Saint marc
75002, Paris, France

Alain Caussieu
ESCP Europe Business School
79, avenue de la Republique
75543, Paris, France

Sebatien Modicom
StratAdviser France
8 rue Saint Marc
75002, Paris, France

Claude Hansen
Chaine de Vie
59 rue du General Faidherbe
76600, Le Havre, France

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Proceedings of the 37th ESReDA Seminar, Baden, Swiss, October 22-23, 2009

Abstract

The Rouen-Paris train commuter population travel 130 km, twice per day.
Commuters have experienced a loss in Reliability, mainly due to a decreased
Availability of equipment and the increased problems in Maintainability for an aging
fleet of rolling stock that is oftentimes more than 30 years old. We therefore studied
the perception of Commuters (as End Users) needs by the Operator and tried to
identify whether the Operator was willing to share this knowledge with the Original
Equipment Manufacturers (OEM). After surveying the situation, the inescapable
conclusion is that there are different kinds of End Users: commuters, crew, and
support technicians and that the Operator doesnt have the appropriate strategy to
identify their needs and respond to them although numerous methodology are
available.

Keywords: End Users, Commuters, Strategy, OEM, SAF

1. Introduction
The commitment of the OEM to deliver and to generate customer confidence is a
massive challenge. One of the ways to answer this is to integrate the needs of the end
customers from the earliest stages of the design phase.

End users integration maximises the design phase in the best possible manner,
creating sustainable added value through a people-centric approach. By using
embedded knowledge within the organization, optimal overall equipment
effectiveness over a lifetime is achieved.

Profusion of literature on this subject is available regarding International

communication1, global survey organisations such as the Global Ocean Observing
System (GOOS)2, the Norwegian fishing industry 3 or even in the Health Informatics
field4.

It is therefore relevant to evaluate how operators scrutinize their End Users needs
because, as the OEM direct clients, they are responsible for such data communication.

In order to evaluate how an operator collect, analyse and understand End users needs
we choose to focus on the 130 km long Rouen-Paris SNCF liaison and the
relationship between Commuters and the French Railway Operator.

The Rouen-Paris train commuter population is believed to cover 6,000 individuals

who travel 130 km, on a daily basis. Roughly 25% of this commuter population
travels 1st class, with the remaining 75% travels 2nd class. Both 1st and 2nd class
Commuters have experienced a loss in Reliability, mainly due to a decreased
Availability of equipment (a prime example is the constant shortage of 1st class
coaches) and the increased problems in Maintainability for an aging fleet of rolling
stock that is oftentimes more than 30 years old.

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Proceedings of the 37th ESReDA Seminar, Baden, Swiss, October 22-23, 2009

2. Material & Method

End-users are people, groups of people and organisations that use or consume
Railway Operator products and services. As such, end-users may also be referred to
as consumers. They are a diverse group, including people, whatever the age or
gender, level of income, geographic environment or work activities. End-users,
whether they are organisations or people, have varied requirements. End-users may
range in expertise and awareness, including those with detailed technical knowledge
as well as people whose focus is on human factors such as usability.

Commuters are defined by End Users using the Corail Intercits (Intercity liaison)
service between Rouen and Paris more than 3 times per Week.

In order to assess the question we interviewed the Director of both the Cherbourg-
Paris and Le Havre-Paris liaison of the SNCF, the French Railway Operator. The
Semi directive interview was focused on the Rouen-Paris section. This interview was
made possible by the direct involvement of SNCF HQ which the authors would like
to thank for their support.

The semi directive interview covered topics such as:

Management procedure of Service Affecting Failures (SAF)

RAMS policy at the Rouen-Paris
Importance of Commuters in terms of economic impact
Perception of Commuters needs and ways to integrate them
Interest to international meetings such as ESReDA
Knowledge sharing policy with OEM

Following the Interview, the SNCF released some data extracted from their own data
files and from a market study performed earlier in the year by the IPSOS institute.

Required data were:

Number of subscribers (weekly or monthly subscriptions) on the Rouen-Paris

segment
Percentage of these Commuters regarding the total number of passengers per month
Regularity (less than 10 min late) of trains 3104, 3102 and 3106 from Rouen to Paris
as well as trains 3125, 3127 and 3131 from Paris to Rouen
Perception of this regularity from the Commuters point of view
Perception of the equipment adequacy of those trains regarding the ability to perform
work while commuting
Perception of the equipment adequacy of those trains regarding Commuters
expectations in terms of comfort
Mean number of technical incident onboard of those trains
Mean number of technical incident on the rail track, faced by those trains
Mean number of information release due to traffic incident
Qualitative perception of information release in case of traffic incident

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Proceedings of the 37th ESReDA Seminar, Baden, Swiss, October 22-23, 2009

Authors made it clear that information from the IPSOS market study and the
proprietary data base should be paired or at least cover the same time period in order
to allow comparison.

Data provided by the SNCF werent backed up by any reference or datasheets or any
other way to check relevance and robustness. The official site
http://www.infolignes.com although designed to deliver reports of traffic incidents
erase any data after 24 hours. Therefore authors are unable to provide any graph or
chart regarding those data.

Additionally the Director of both the Cherbourg-Paris and Le Havre-Paris liaison was
reluctant to deliver the appropriate authorization to perform Crew Members and
Commuters interviews on board while commuting. The allegation being that the
IPSOS study gives all the response the SNCF need.

Nevertheless, Authors managed to perform face to face meetings with a small sample
of Crew members and Commuters outside the trains and SNCF railway stations on a
non formal basis. Unfortunately the number of interview (8 Crew Members & 8
Commuters) is insufficient to perform relevant statistical analysis of the content. In
addition the ban on our study prevented us to select interviewees on a random basis.
Therefore results are purely of qualitative nature.

Authors apologize for the limitations in their work imposed by the Operator and will
include this fact in the discussion.

3. Results
The interview of the Director of both the Cherbourg-Paris and Le Havre-Paris liaison
responsible for the Rouen-Paris segment allowed collecting the following verbatim:

RAMS, SAF, and their related workshops are interesting but with low return on
investment. You have no time to spend on those when you operate a complex
business unit such as the Cherbourg-Paris and Le Havre-Paris liaison.
Commuters have representatives thanks to their association therefore there is no
communication issues with them
Commuters benefit from undue privileges such as a lower price as other travellers
and it is impossible to change this because if we would do so they will block the rail
track
There is no need to perform any elasticity market study regarding the Commuters
travel fare
Other travellers are satisfied by our offer whereas commuters arent therefore it is
more important to focus on the first category
First class commuters should be happy with the simple fact that they commute and
stop complain about irrelevant topics
We pay much attention to Commuters from Vernon (a town between Rouen and
Paris) because should they block the rail track it would have a bigger impact than
others
Crew members do their duty to cope with Commuters
Commuters are always complaining about something

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Proceedings of the 37th ESReDA Seminar, Baden, Swiss, October 22-23, 2009

The IPSOS study demonstrate that we are doing pretty well and that our clients are
happy with what we deliver
Being ten minutes late is nothing and travellers should stop complain about this. It
would be nice to be on schedule but we are not in a perfect world. Ten minutes delay
for a 80 minutes trip is not really a matter regarding the complexity of the segment
Those Rouen-Paris Commuters are people who deserted Paris to pay less rent.
Therefore they should pay more while commuting
Last year we gained more clients than we lost so there is no need to worry about
Commuters dissatisfaction

SNCF data are supposed to cover the January-March 2009 (Q1) period while the
IPSOS study was performed between the 29th of March and the 4th of April.

Provided data are as follow5:

1400 Commuters on the Rouen-Paris segment; 8,4% of 2009 Q1 travels (SNCF data)
84,1% of selected trains experienced less than 10 minutes delay on arrival (SNCF
data)
25% of travellers are satisfied or very satisfied with the regularity of the Rouen-Paris
segment (IPSOS data)
47% of travellers are satisfied or very satisfied with the dedicated work environment
in trains with 76% satisfaction when it comes to the TER 2N NG Alstom Coaches*
(IPSOS data)
69% of travellers are satisfied or very satisfied with the cosiness of trains with 80%
satisfaction when it comes to the TER 2N NG Alstom Coaches* (IPSOS data)
29% of travellers are satisfied or very satisfied with the quality of information in case
of Service Affecting Failures** (IPSOS data)
70% overall satisfaction of travellers on the Rouen-Paris segment (IPSOS data)

* TER 2N NG Alstom Coaches are dedicated to interregional transportation.

** It is impossible for the SNCF to collect any data regarding the mean number of broadcasts
information in case of Service Affecting Failures.

Non formal face to face interviews of Crew members and Commuters stress the
followings.

From the Crew members point of view, selected verbatim reveal the followings:

There is more than just one type End Users. You have commuters, crew members,
the engine driver, the maintenance team and certainly more.
The engines that operate on the Rouen-Paris segment are more than 15 years old and
do not support very well the new optic fibre multiplex reversibility system that was
recently adapted to allow the reversibility of trains.
The new TER 2N NG Alstom Coaches and engines seem to be reliable unlike the 30
year old Corail material.
We do not get support from our management. Our daily reports of Service Affecting
Failures seem to become lost in the management pipeline.

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Proceedings of the 37th ESReDA Seminar, Baden, Swiss, October 22-23, 2009

We are left helpless in front on angry commuters. We know that each train control
will generate verbal assaults and insults from desperate commuters which generates
anxiety that I need to manage with my team before we get on board.
Most of our managers have a pure engineering background nowadays. They used to
work for the maintenance. They do not understand the specificity of commuters
relationship. It is outside the field of their own experience.
For the past two years there has been a rising concern about commuters but only
during a couple of meetings. Mainly because of the coming end of our monopole in
2012. It is more an intellectual question than a real issue to anticipate until now.
We expect to share the German experience regarding our new market rules
Our future is to work alone in the trains. If the relationship with commuters doesnt
improve its going to be a nightmare.

From the Commuters point of view, selected verbatim reveal the followings:

What surprises me is the more and more frequent association between delays and
technical problems rather than network issues.
We have the feeling that the SNCF abandon us to concentrate on interregional trains
and TGVs.
What means on time nowadays?
I have negative comments from my boss about the fact that I commute. I am sure
that my professional stagnation in my company is linked to it.
I am trapped. I cannot accept appointments before 10 am anymore. Too much
chance that Ill be late. And I cannot migrate my activity back in Normandy.
The systematic shortage of 1st class coaches compels many of us to travel standing
or in 2nd Class which prevents us from working while commuting. It is highly
frustrating.
We suffer from daily delays! And we cant do anything about this!
The new coaches are a joke! There is less 1st class seats and no cosiness at all
I simply boycott those new coaches! They are not design for us or for such travels.
No room for legs, harsh seats, and so on. They look nice but are awful.
When you realize the amount of money we inject in the Normandy economy we
should get more attention from our politics. They should put more pressure on the
SNCF!

4. Discussion
Many Commuters feel that Normandy's GDP benefits greatly from their earning in
Paris and spending in Rouen. Therefore they expect their local government to put
pressure on the operator in order to improve their travel conditions because of their
self perceived critical economic weight. .They cannot understand why the regional
government seems to have little concern for the plight of the train commuter.
Meanwhile the regional government invest on new TER 2N NG Alstom Coaches in
order to respond to what they believe to be Commuters needs.

So far Commuters havent perceive a direct impact because the new TER 2N NG
Alstom Coaches are clearly positioned for the interregional transport and not the

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Proceedings of the 37th ESReDA Seminar, Baden, Swiss, October 22-23, 2009

intercity they are using. Indeed some of this material connects Rouen to Paris while
performing its duty but it is not the positioning therefore End Users do not perceive
this as a response to their specific needs (one reason being the numerous stops
between Rouen and Paris that impair the usefulness of this service from their point of
view).

Obviously the SNCF doesnt pay attention to collect what can be relevant data in
view of both End Users Needs analysis and Service Affecting Failures. As an
example, crew members are currently ask to collect the number of 2nd class
Commuters travelling 1st class due to overload of passengers but never the number of
the 1st class Commuters who are compelled to travel 2nd class due to insufficient
number of coaches. This introduces a huge bias in Service Affecting Failures data
analysis and End Users satisfaction evaluation.

In other word the Operational side of the French Railway Operator neglect the key
actor when it comes to assess End Users issues such as health, safety, performance,
quality, reliability, environmental protection, ease-of-use, compatibility and
interoperability while the Marketing side knows that End Users can contribute in
many ways:

by ensuring processes are open and transparent, which will lead to greater fairness
and effectiveness in standards-setting, and increase public confidence in standards;
by giving examples of how products and services are actually used (or not used as
intended) in practice;
by providing data on safety aspects to enable safety matters to be properly addressed;
by contributing expertise about end user needs, usability, accessibility, privacy,
security and end-user protection;
by broadening potential markets for products and services and increasing global trade
through the development of standards that take flexibility, interoperability and
backwards compatibility into consideration;
by assisting in keeping design costs down through avoiding the need for costly
revisions;
by being involved in product testing as well as feasibility and pilot studies.

The Operator satisfies itself with 90 % of its trains arriving on time plus 10 minutes6.
Two years ago the official travel time from Rouen to Paris was 70 minutes. It is now
80 minutes, roughly 14.3% longer with a 20% chance to be more than 90 minutes
when it comes to the commuters trains. In other word one Commuters train out of
five takes more than 90 minutes to travel 130 km. Surprisingly Crew Members seem
not to complain about this increase of time in duty and remain silent on that matter.

What if an OEM decides that 20% of its production shall not respect anymore the
agreed specifications with its client Operator?

From the Commuters point of view Crew Members are perceived to have little
empathy for the impact that small and/or more important delays have on busy
professionals. As an example extracted from authors interviews, a delay in a
reputedly on-time train network, caused by a crew member unable to latch a door
could cause great impact: A lawyer could arrive late in Court, causing consequences
to his client; a self-employed businessperson could have a drastic shortcut in his

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Proceedings of the 37th ESReDA Seminar, Baden, Swiss, October 22-23, 2009

income for upsetting a client. And it doesnt help matters when crew members
flippantly tell the stories of workers who lost their jobs as a result of recurrent
tardiness.

This situation has led many Rouen-Paris Commuters to believe that they have been
betrayed by the operator for the sake of the more innovative equipment such as the
TGV or the newer TER 2N NG Alstom coaches. The environment, with its rising
amount of disgruntled Commuters, has created a breeding ground for hooliganism.
The plain and simple fact that a small group can block the entire system by a simple
assault of a representative of the operator on a power trip demonstrates a great
Safety risk for all parties involved7.

On the contrary, Crew Members clearly perceive the stress of Commuters but feel
desperate because they do not see any impact of their numerous warnings forwarded
to their management.

The inability of the SNCF to involve itself in the analysis of its End Users and its
propensity to share its own perception of their needs is similar to the situation of
certain patients surrogates who advocate their own representation of End Users'
perspectives while those patients are unable to present their views because they are
elderly people, children or people with disabilities.

A systematic review of literature published in peer-reviewed journals from 1990 to

2005 revealed that critical issues in using surrogates include key ethical, social,
cultural, legal and technological factors8. Other limitations rise when ascertaining the
best interest of End Users; potential conflict of interest; possible biased decisions
which nurture the burden on surrogates. On the other end, the key advantage of
surrogate involvement in decisions making process is their ability to represent End
Users' needs, values and wishes. The main disadvantages include potential
discrepancies between the decisions and conclusions of surrogates and End Users; the
failure of surrogates to predict End Users' preferences accurately and the lack of
certainty that useful information will be obtained through the surrogacy process as
highlighted by our own study.

On the other hand, the integration of users' representatives in the design process is a
good point for End Users. A simple solution consists of implementing a procedure to
convene regular meetings allowing direct exchanges between the development team
and a sample of End Users. Those meetings aim at getting users' feedbacks on the
existing material and at validating further developments. Unfortunately, this
methodology remains insufficient to resolve the complex usability problems of any
system. A combine team from Gif-Sur-Yvette and INSERM identified that it is
necessary to involve specialists to analyze, re-interpret and re-formulate End Users'
expression of their needs and to properly formalize the requirements for design
purposes9.

In order to overcome such issues, some research teams are looking for improving
existing computer-based inclusive design tools such as HADRIAN as does the
Department of Design and Technology of the Loughborough University in the UK.
Their current research addresses two common needs for designers and ergonomists
working towards developing more inclusive products and environments, namely data
on users that is accessible, valid, and applicable and a means of utilising the data to

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assess the accessibility of designs during the early stages of development10. Currently
their tool is being expanded to support transport design. This includes data on an
individual's ability to undertake a variety of transport-related tasks, such as vehicle
ingress/egress, coping with uneven surfaces, steps, street furniture and complex
pedestrian environments. Tomorrow this tool will compare an individual's physical,
cognitive and emotional abilities with the demands placed upon that individual by the
mode(s) of transport available and the route options selected. Limitation of such
computer based tools is that, again, agreement between expert evaluators and End
Users on the value of the output is usually moderate and that for the more subjective
explicative components; agreement is fair, poor, or worse11.

Another inspirational source can be the Knowledge Broker approach. This is a

popular knowledge translation and exchange strategy emerging in Canada to promote
interaction between researchers and End Users, as well as to develop capacity for
evidence-informed decision making. The idea is to provide a link between research
producers and End Users by developing a mutual understanding of goals and cultures,
collaborates with End Users to identify issues and problems for which solutions are
required, and facilitates the identification, access, assessment, interpretation, and
translation of research evidence into local policy and practice. Knowledge-brokering
can be carried out by individuals, groups and/or organizations12.

5. Conclusion
Appropriate mean to generate embedded knowledge is to rely on a well-designed
market study targeted to identify the end user's current needs, beliefs and behaviours
on one side; and desired beliefs and behaviours from the operator and end user point
of view on the other side. Such market research needs to avoid current standard
questionnaire irrelevant to crisis communication, but must contrarily concentrate on
situational specifics. Such studies are best completed with semi-directive interviews
with representatives of all stakeholders. Special attention should be paid to the End
Users' satisfaction criteria in order to integrate them at the earliest stage of the design
phase as well as later on in the process.

Additionally, a prodigious amount of invaluable data is generated through the

reporting of crew members. This data can be analysed and interpreted by OEM, in
cooperation with operators, by think tanks.

These think tanks could bring together engineers, marketers and crisis communication
specialists. By doing so, the safety and the reliability of the equipment is a key
success factor from a legal point of view because they allow prevent most of the
OEM legal risks. However, the absence of communication from the OEM to the End
Users could cause exposure to increased legal liability OEM based on, for example,
lack of advice or security warnings within these communications.

When looking to achieve RAMS goals it is important to anticipate two potential

pitfalls: lack of respect for RAMS by humans and unexpected interactions between
humans and RAMS. These pitfalls could ultimately lead to unpredictable variations
of performance, requiring increased responsiveness and adaptability from the system
to prevent incidents or crisis situations. In fact, one must admit that although
Reliability, Maintainability and Safety benefit from appropriate attention because

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Proceedings of the 37th ESReDA Seminar, Baden, Swiss, October 22-23, 2009

they belong to the same mostly mechanical concepts, while Availability remains
isolated and often neglected because it belongs to a different kind of conceptual group
in which the human factor comes into play.

After surveying the situation, the inescapable conclusion is that there are different
kinds of End Users: Commuters, crew, and support technicians and this reality will
not go away, even if we focus on Commuters. The inadequacy between the original
specifications provided by Operators and their clients real expectations is the key
reason why OEM should investigate those by themselves as the key success factor of
sustained market growth. The perception of this phenomenon is obscured because so
far the gain of new clients is still outpaces the loss of clients at the operator level.

6. Acknowledgements
Authors would like to thanks Jeffrey Taylor and John Bruton for their editorial
support.

7. References

1
ITU-T Recommendation F.790, Telecommunications accessibility guidelines for older persons and
persons with disabilities
2
http://ioc.unesco.org/goos/
3
Geving IH, Reitan J, Sandsund M et al. Safer work clothing for fishermen. Int Marit Health.
2006;57(1-4):94-102.
4
Talmon J, Ammenwerth E, Brender J et al. STARE-HI--Statement on reporting of evaluation studies
in Health Informatics. Int J Med Inform. 2009;78(1):1-9.
5
Data provided by SNCF
6
Data provided by SNCF
7
Les Echos 13 january 2009.
8
Shah SG, Farrow A, Robinson I. The representation of healthcare End Users' perspectives by
surrogates in healthcare decisions: a literature review. Scand J Caring Sci. 2009 9
9
Nis J, Pelayo S. From users involvement to users' needs understanding: A case study. Int J Med
Inform. 2009 4.
10
Marshall R, Porter JM, Sims R et al. The HADRIAN approach to accessible transport. Work.
2009;33(3):335-44.
11
Walsh P, Doyle D, McQuillen KK et al. Comparison of the evaluations of a case-based reasoning
decision support tool by specialist expert reviewers with those of End Users. West J Emerg Med. 2008
May;9(2):74-80.
12
Dobbins M, Robeson P, Ciliska D et al. A description of a knowledge broker role implemented as
part of a randomized controlled trial evaluating three knowledge translation strategies. Implement Sci.
2009 Apr 27;4:23.

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