Hi, everyone. I don't have an intro slide, so I'll just do it like that. My name is Kat. I'm from Berlin,
and I'm a freelance data software, or whatever person, and also I like to travel by train, and I guess everybody here as well in the room does.
And in particular, I like to take those long distance, cross-country, multi-day far away places, type of train trips.
And when I talk to people about them, oh, I've heard it all. It's just too slow, it's too expensive, it's too complicated, and honestly, yeah, fair.
It's often, it's mostly slower, it's often more expensive, but in this room, and outside of it, I have met so many people who still want to do it regardless.
Many of which who embrace this loneliness, it can be nice to be in a way somewhere, not just arrive there, right?
But complicated, complicated, that's the killer that is where we are, are losing people. Again, heard from so many about train trips that never actually got through the planning stage,
because just trying to figure out the right way for me, the right a tenery that works for me and the people I'm traveling with, had already been a such a frustrating experience that it completely killed their momentum,
and added something else, and honestly, sometimes that was just simply too fly there.
So I, I totally get it. I guess I'll repeat the people in this room get it to, right? Who here has had a similar frustrating experience planning schedule trip? Okay, that's that is.
So here's mine, the original story of this project basically, so I was in October, 23, I was trying to plan a trip to Corsica, and I hope for an optimistic, I had to multiple,
like of these cross-country train journey planners, and I put in my storage, and my destination, and my when, and then boom, long list of options, and so hard to grasp what is actually going on.
It's like, it's sorted by departure time, which at this point of the planning process, I'm not particularly interested in.
What I really want to see is basically an idea of, I could go this way, I could go that way, and all the alternatives I can do here, these are all the alternatives I can, I can do here.
But instead, I get this, this unstructured list that that hides all of that information, and basically I need to click at every one of them in the video and find out,
I, that's that rule, that's that rule, and then if by miracle, I happen to find an option, that kind of works for me.
I just want to make a few tweaks, well what can I do? The only chance I have is to go back into the search interface, and maybe say,
oh, many increase the transfer time, here a little bit, and then hope, hope, that whatever my result comes back actually still works,
and that not some algorithm has decided that now there's some more optimal way to go and my whole idea is lost.
So I gave up, I went off the internet and I went analog.
I cut out little pieces of paper one hour is one centimeter, and then I pushed those boxes around on the paper calendar, and this is the trip I ended actually up doing, which was lovely by the way, totally recommend doing that one.
It doesn't have to be that way, why can't travel planning simply be fun?
Why can't it be kind of about exploring ideas of just trying things, oh, that could be nice, and there I say it.
Why can't it even be about kind of sparking imagination, sparking data gaming, imagining already while you're sitting there in front of your computer?
Oh, it will be so nice, and I finally arrived from Great Berlin in that warm city, step outside of the train station and take a coffee outside in the sun, or it will be lovely passing through the Alps looking at the mountains through the train window, or along the Mediterranean looking over the water, because I think if people can make that emotional connection already during the planning process.
Quite more likely that they actually follow through, look the trip and hopefully go in it and have a lot of fun.
So I believe one of the issues is that, one of the issues is that criteria when planning such long trips are quite different from the one in full short local trips, and that's why perhaps the standard user interface for joining planning isn't as well suited.
So there's very, very, the experience people that have done these trips, you want to look at buffers, right? You don't want to be missing important trains.
You don't, probably don't want to depend on the last train of the day, because if you missed that one, you'll stuck wherever you are right now, but it's also about opportunities.
Like, oh, I see my train goes, my connection goes through Zurich. I might just want to meet my friend that I have there. Maybe I can even spend the night, then I don't need a hotel room, it could be perfect, right?
So I tried to kind of distribute this a little bit into geographically related things and time related things, but I mean they are, they are like this in a way, they kind of depend on each other and you kind of always have to have both in view at the same time.
Problem is, like this criteria there, obviously, always very personal, but I also think you don't know them when you start traveling, planning your trip.
Some of them, of course, with the buffers and then not depending on the last train, yes, you do know when you could trace them, but many of them are ideas opportunities that just come up while you're planning.
And some of them probably never even to a death far, it's just an intuition, intuition, you kind of look at the trip and all that.
That's not quite right, but I can't even pinpoint what it is that makes it a good itinerary and a bad itinerary, it's just an intuition.
And any and I mean four different people might come up with for the same trip with wildly different itineraries.
I guess you yourself might in different situations come up with four wildly different itineraries.
So here is going from Berlin to Napoli.
There's the first two are going through Munich and Rona.
The other two are going through Zurich and the first one is like the one busy day and you just get there.
For me that bit, this one is the horror.
But I've done these kinds of trips before sometimes you really just need to go somewhere, right?
And I'm sure there's people out there who like these trips.
For me, the second one is the one that leaves me, it takes a bit slower, it disperses it a little bit and gives me time to explore a city I've never been in.
The third one I would love to do if I actually had that friend in Zurich.
For any volunteers.
And this one is actually you can't do Zurich road from Berlin in one day.
So it shouldn't, it probably wouldn't in any journey planning tools it wouldn't fill up.
Because it's worse than the first one because you can't do it in one day.
But if you happen to have that friend in Zurich, why not do that one and why not perhaps even stay a day longer?
Could be fun.
And like I said, it's intuition, it's exploration and that kind of exploration is really hard to do any kind of rigid from to when user interfaces.
Because you'll always be in this situation where you have to change the search input through trial and error to hopefully get the search results you want.
When really, what you want is to just change the search results, right?
To modify it so that it works for you.
So there's a prototype of a user interface that I've been working on running online under this URL.
I also have it on the last slide again.
I'll have some screenshots in here, but it's like just try it out.
It's much more fun that way.
You get more out of it on desktop, but yeah, everybody's on mobile anyway, so yeah, just go over it.
So the question is how could the more flexible more depth of user interface for joining planning look like?
I'm very deliberately not focusing on data just trying to get a prototype to explore some kind of UX things with it, but more on data later.
So you have not unusual, you have like the time view and the geographical view side by side so that you can do time exploration and geographic exploration at the same time,
which, like I said earlier, kind of they are a little bit like this, right?
For geographic exploration, what you get is a map and on the map under the dots,
and these were the representative places that you can go to, so you can click on them and you already get some context information.
I'm not sure if it's readable, but it says here that for example London, from Hamburg, which is our home city right now,
you can reach London with two transfers.
And that already gives you the opportunity to explore a little bit because often you don't know exactly where you're going, right?
You just know, I want to go to the beach there, I want to go into some, I want to go into the mountains.
You don't necessarily have fully formed idea, I want to go there.
So you can explore a bit on the map, which places are easy to get to, and then you click on, show the routes,
and well, it will show you the routes to get there, which you then of course can click on to select,
all pretty usual, pretty common, a user interface everybody knows, but not ready for trains.
Like, for cars, for walking, this is pretty standard, for trains, Google Maps does it,
but most of the times when you see a map, it's for visualization, when we're in journey planners,
like they show you the journey, but you can't really interact with the journey on the map.
There's a few things that still can be added to this, I think the map part of the whole prototype is the much less developed.
So of course you might want to change your journey.
A lot of people have asked for just kind of dragging routes, like, what if you wanted to go through Amsterdam, for example,
where I get to see how that would look like, if that would work for you?
I'm not sure if it's accessible to everybody, people understand that that is possible.
So there's just something to try out, but you can always just make it a click on Amsterdam.
I want to go here, instead, in case this kind of dragging thing doesn't work out.
And another feature, I think, could be going back to what I said earlier about the day dreaming, the thinking of what could be.
Maybe you could even do a little bit to trigger that by displaying this kind of background information,
like little pictures of, here, this is up there, this is what if you take the train to Stockholm,
in the winter, you might, if you're lucky, see a lot of snow outside, it's really beautiful.
And if you take the night train from Milan to Sicily, just below Napoli, you'll wake up and you'll look out of the window,
and you'll see the sea, the Mediterranean for the next three hours.
And who doesn't want to go on that trip right now?
So I think what I think is the real heart of this project is this calendar view, which very obviously is taking what I did on the paper and put it into computer, right?
So when you have clicked in the map on one of the routes, you get a proposed intenary, it's probably not going to be the one that works for you.
So you have a very easy way to change that by just doing drag and drop operations, so you could grab the purple one, when you start moving it, you see these lines appear,
and these lines mean other departures between in this case, it's Paris and London.
Other departures between Paris and London, so you already get an idea of the train run a day,
is that one I need to focus on because it's rare and I really need to plan that one in, or if it's in this, like in this case, where it happens all the time.
So you grab it, you start dragging, the purple lines appear, when you move it into a correct position, you get a preview, and then you can drop it, and then it has, it has moved there, and you have adapted your itinerary.
And you probably get a nice feeling already also for, if that works better for you or not, then there's not, then yeah, just drag and drop it back.
What I also like is that it kind of directly, of course gives you a feeling for the length of the transfer time that you have, and you can directly see also, if you happen to be on the last train of the day.
Like, if there is no line, it'd be below where you are right now, then maybe this is not the one, you want to have, if you as risk, ever as I am, when taking trains.
If you, ideas that this one is more of a buck really, still open on the calendar, the first is right now, you can do very fun stuff, like you can move things around, and you could take the purple one and put it in front of the green one, and then you have.
Be free, be wild, do you think, but it's probably not going to get you to London.
So that's thinking about how to resolve that, whether to make it illegal.
So there are some people who want to do things like, if I move the orange one, maybe the purple one should move as well, I don't know if that's too complicated, a lot of things left to explore here.
And then I think this could be, this could be super cool. If extra information was available, I don't have it.
But if I knew how expensive different trains were, it would be cool to directly display it here in the calendar.
So I did promise, I talk on routing, and I think in a way all of this is routing, right, but to put it together.
What is routing in this context? Number one, we need to find first the past that can get us from some A to some B.
And right now I'm pre-calculating that and I probably can always be pre-calculated.
And then if the user comes and asks for an attenuary on a specific date, that is when you get into action and fill that route with actual traffic connection data.
And it might happen that this connection just doesn't exist on the day that the user is asking, then the user face obviously needs to handle that gracefully.
It doesn't right now, because right now this situation doesn't arise, see next slide.
And then we let the user do the rest. So we just supply them with some proposal route and then they can start dragging and dropping.
Right now, I am on the tool as only supporting four-star cities and I think 20-ish destination cities, which means I could get away with just brute-forcing.
And I actually did manual post-processing, meaning I pruned and this is stupid route. Let's not take that. So again, lots of thought needed and work needed for doing that.
Right now, the tool is full front end. There's no back end. Meaning the second part needed to be super fast so that it's not lagging when the user is clicking on something.
So it's an extremely simple, it's actually called a create stupid itinerary in the code.
It's an extremely, oh, it's not there, sorry. Extremely simple algorithm where you take your, you want, you go from this city to this city to this city to this city.
And you just fill them with the earliest possible connection times and then it might happen that your proposal actually starts at four in the morning. So you push this a little bit further so that it's at a more reasonable starting out while not trying to
have its swap into the next day. And then again, you let the user to the rest. As for four data, like I said, didn't do much on data, wanted to focus on the user interface for now.
Had a problem with, I mean, he told the data. And just pulling different GTFS files from different countries isn't going to, isn't going to cut it because that if they stop at the border.
If it's a cross border turn and they stop at the border, then what's the, what, what are people supposed to do with that? It's just as a feedback to the data producing entities.
So what I've currently did is I pulled the data for Germany at UFS file once. I did, for the, the connection outside of Germany, I kind of manually pulled some data together. I did this back in November.
I'm pretending that that data is still true that every train runs on every day. None of that is obviously correct.
But I think it is enough of a basis of data to explore and see if this mechanism works.
So I've already had interesting discussions here at this conference about people with people about how to make use of existing efforts of data, routing, et cetera.
But if anybody else just come up to me if you have an idea of what could help me could help the project further.
And that's it from me again, just try out the tool. Everything is on on GitHub as well. And thank you.
Yeah, so questions.
Oh yeah, I saw you first at least. You are realizing a dream.
Okay, so the question was I am realizing a dream. Thank you.
I just, some feedback. You said, yeah, if you do an illegal move, what should happen and so on, I think for such a tool to go on to say this does not have, but not prevent to do it.
You know what you need to know, but who will change something to start.
So so this was a question and the answer all in one. So this was back about illegal moves and should it will warn or should it prevent and the audience member said it should just warn it shouldn't prevent and I'm kind of on the same page.
I like to just move things out of the way and then do the other stuff and then I can put it back in.
So I kind of lean towards warning right now as well. So I think you had a question.
Yeah, I already looked at the page before and I also really love it.
But maybe also I'm, because you said you didn't like that.
But then I do that all the time and I kind of love it.
But I still would like to have a tool like this. The thing which I really really hate about it is the one you already said that this cross order going.
Then the data just drops. So I often have like five tabs open with this railway company, this railway company and this railway company to come on.
So this again was a call to European data producers. Please produce better data.
The last thing I saw that you had a booking point.
Oh, yeah, there's nothing there yet.
Yeah, sure, but I think that's also an important thing because because the the pricing is because often it's like a bit of magic.
Oh, yeah, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I totally get it, hoping for the European Commission to make that booking thing happen.
You know, you're, you're saying the room with a mark of sort of restarting.
Um, I'm there's going to be hopefully, I'll certainly.
I'm sharing feature of which just you, you're Ellen Codes all in necessary information.
I think for more for it. If one of your trains doesn't turn up to pick you up and great plan.
I'll take that with me, but it's not on the immediate agenda.
The person far back, it looks like this time it's running late, which has to be mentioned
at the beginning of the lecture.
Okay, so this was a question about incorporating real-time data to deal with delays, which
is very similar to the question beforehand.
Yeah, would be cool.
I think there's still way too much other stuff first to get done.
But yeah, it should exist, totally.
It should exist.
Yeah, yeah.
Totally.
Yeah.
Totally.
Yeah.
I think the pricing is crazy hard, but one like small thing you might be able to introduce
is like a interrail ticket pricing, the prices are relatively minimal, and you could
estimate those to like give some price, because most of the time other methods don't even exist
by it.
Yeah.
What about the proposal about pricing and maybe interrail would be a good thing to
target first?
And actually, I'm thinking also of you, why not have delay prediction directly there in
the calendar?
Okay, so we still have more time than back there.
Yeah, so this is a question about availability, and if that's also a context information
that should be displayed, and yes, like, I mean if the data is there, it's easy to put it there,
but is the data there?
Yeah.
I was just wondering if you knew about the money in 161?
Yes.
Okay.
Maybe it could be a good idea.
Yes.
Yeah.
So this was a question about men in, I know that one, about men in 161 and maybe getting
in touch, and perhaps sharing, having people share during this experiences and so on on the
website.
Okay.
But I think that's it.
One question.
Okay.
That's one question.
That's right.
How do you determine the things of why you think private enterprise has been paid and
say family building something like this?
I mean, yeah.
So this question is why doesn't, why doesn't this exist already in private?
Commercial tools?
I guess they don't actually try to plan metrics.