An Evaluation Environment for User Studies in the Public Transport Domain

User studies to evaluate public transport systems are often hard to set up. While field tests provide important insight into real-world usability of public transport systems, they are also complex and expensive. Especially in early development stages of public transport related systems, field tests are not appropriate. However, usability of public transport systems is often depending on "real-life" context factors that are hard to reproduce in lab-based user studies. We have developed a mockup of a tram or train compartment that can be flexibly used to create a public transport experience in user studies. In this paper we will describe our experiences and recurring challenges with user studies in public transport, the design and set-up of our mockup, as well as give an insight into its applications in studies we conducted and lessons we learned.