Towards more human-centred passenger information systems: A framework for understanding traveller context

Travellers’ experiences on public transport are continuously influenced by situational context. However, what this context comprises and how it influences travel experiences from the traveller’s perspective remains insufficiently understood. A structured framework can provide a common vocabulary, guide empirical inquiry, and facilitate cross-study learning by clarifying core concepts and their relationships. Existing context frameworks, ontologies, models, and taxonomies (FOMTs) offer valuable insights but often lack detail, focus on a single transportation mode, or insufficiently incorporate the traveller’s perspective. Meanwhile, growing interest in leveraging contextual information in Passenger Information Systems (PISs) highlights the need for a more comprehensive, traveller-centred understanding of context. To address this gap, we conducted focus groups with public transport travellers in the Netherlands ( N = 41) to explore how they experience and articulate context during their journeys. Based on these findings, we developed a Traveller-Centred Context Framework and systematically compared its coverage of contextual dimensions, categories, and factors with existing public transport FOMTs. The comparison revealed substantial differences in the breadth and depth of contextual coverage, while the focus groups identified contextual experiences, personal differences, and interactions between factors that remain underrepresented. The resulting framework provides an empirically grounded, traveller-centred conceptualisation of context in public transport. Beyond supporting the development of context-aware Passenger Information Systems (PISs), it offers a broader basis for public transport research and practice by helping researchers and providers identify contextual influences, inform design decisions, and evaluate services in relation to travellers’ experiences.