Let’s Talk About The Experienced Context: An Example Regarding Public Transport Information Systems

This position paper aims to encourage researchers in the field of context-aware public transport information systems to incorporate human-centred approaches more deeply into their methodologies. Current context-aware systems in this domain often take a representational view and employ a data-first approach. Drawing on insights from previous work, we propose a distinction between the objective context and the experienced context. The experienced context incorporates interactions and perceptions to reflect better how we, as humans, experience the world. To measure this experienced context, we advocate for using qualitative research methods for HCI. To demonstrate this approach, we present the results of a focus group study on context in public transport. The results reveal that emerging experiences are shaped by a combination of various factors. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating user perspectives in designing context-aware systems. Therefore, in this paper, we take the position that if we want to improve the context-aware public transport information systems, we need to understand what travellers truly experience during their journey.