Lesson

Understand the market during the development of an Advanced Travel Information System (ATIS) to reduce project development uncertainty and produce a more functional end product.

Institutional lessons from a test of a wide-area network to communicate traffic conditions in the Seattle area.

10/19/1998
Seattle,Washington,United States

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Background (Show)

Lesson Learned

During the SWIFT project, a number of institutional issues were encountered that affected the deployment of project. One issue related to the end users of the devices being tested. The lessons learned based on marketability of the SWIFT system were as follows:
  • Clearly delineate any issues regarding market uncertainty to facilitate the development process. Issues and questions regarding the ultimate marketability of the services provided by SWIFT probably caused some SWIFT participants to question some of the development efforts for the project and delayed some of those efforts. A good market evaluation would have described the market issues and would have reduced uncertainty and facilitated product development.
  • Include market research and end user-system prototyping to ensure that the final system is well received by the public. During the project, participants expressed concern about how well the SWIFT system would be accepted by users because user inputs and prototyping were minimal during the design phase. The significance or implication of this issue is that customer acceptance is crucial to the overall success of this type of traveler information application. Therefore, it is crucial to obtain end-user inputs throughout the system’s design, development, testing, and fielding process.

Not knowing whether consumers would ultimately accept the ITS products and services contributed to some development uncertainty and associated deployment problems with the SWIFT project. The impact of these issues could have been greatly reduced if market research and user prototyping had been conducted.

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Source

Seattle Wide-area Information For Travelers, Institutional Issues Study

Author: Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)

Published By: Washington State Department of Transportation

Source Date: 10/19/1998

EDL Number: 7404

URL: http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/jpodocs/repts_te/7404.pdf

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Lesson Contacts

Lesson Contact(s):

Edward McCormack
Washington State Transportation Center
206-543-3348
edm@u.washington.edu


Agency Contact(s):

Larry Senn
Washington State Department of Transportation
206-543-6741
larsenn@u.washington.edu

Lesson Analyst:

Firoz Kabir
Noblis
202-863-2987
firoz.kabir@noblis.org


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Lesson ID: 2005-00115