Customer experience for infrastructure and the built environment

Major infrastructure projects are designed to create change. A new rail line might be intended to shift people out of cars. An airport redevelopment may be designed to improve passenger flow. A civic building may need to make services easier to access, while a streetscape or transport project may aim to change how people move through a place.

The physical asset is only part of the equation. The value of the investment also depends on how people respond to it. People need to understand the environment, feel confident using it and, in many cases, change established behaviours. This is where customer experience can make a meaningful contribution.

Bringing the customer into infrastructure design

Customer experience helps project teams understand how people use an environment today, what makes that experience difficult and what needs to be different in the future.

The aim is not simply to ask people whether they like a proposed design. It is to understand what they are trying to achieve, what influences the choices they make and what might prevent them from adopting a new behaviour when the environment changes.

For infrastructure projects, those questions often connect directly to the investment case. A new transport service only delivers value if people choose to use it. A redesigned terminal only improves flow if passengers can understand where to go. A new public space only works if people feel comfortable and confident using it.

Our role is to make those behavioural requirements visible early enough for them to influence the design.

Turning research into design requirements

One of the challenges with customer research in infrastructure projects is making sure the findings are useful to the people designing the asset.

Research may show that people find an environment confusing, that certain journeys create unnecessary effort or that people lose confidence when information is unclear. Those findings are useful, but they need to be translated into something that can guide design decisions.

We turn customer insight into a clear set of experience requirements. These describe what needs to be true of the physical environment, service and overall experience for people to behave in the way the project intends.

That might mean making movement more intuitive, reducing unnecessary decision-making, improving reassurance during disruption or ensuring that different access needs are accommodated properly. These requirements can then sit alongside engineering, safety, operational and commercial considerations as concepts are developed and trade-offs are made.

Keeping CX involved as the design develops

Customer experience is most useful when it remains part of the project as the design evolves.

We typically begin by understanding the behavioural assumptions behind the project and identifying the customer groups that matter most to its success. We then use research to understand their needs, behaviours and barriers, and translate that into a set of experience requirements for the design team.

As concepts develop, those requirements can be used to review emerging designs, identify potential customer issues and guide further refinement. More developed concepts can then be tested with the people who will eventually use them.

The purpose is not to tell architects, engineers or planners how to design. It is to give them a clear view of what the experience needs to achieve and to make sure that perspective remains present as the project.

Where this approach applies

This approach is particularly useful in projects where physical space, services and human behaviour are closely connected.

That includes rail and public transport, airports, roading and streetscapes, major public buildings, civic spaces and large precinct developments. These projects usually involve different types of users, competing needs and difficult design decisions, which makes it especially important to understand how people are likely to respond in practice.

Helping infrastructure perform as intended

Good infrastructure still needs to be safe, technically sound, buildable and commercially viable. Customer experience does not replace any of those disciplines. It adds another perspective: whether people will understand, use and respond to the environment in the way the project expects them to.

Bringing that perspective into the design process gives project teams a better chance of creating infrastructure that works not only as a physical asset, but as an experience for the people who use it.