Traveller information channel in digital television: User centred design and piloting

Drivers and travellers have a lot of decisions to make before the intended trip. These decisions deal with e.g. choice of the mode and route as well as the time of the departure. These decisions have a great impact on fluency of traffic, usage of public transport, environmental load as well as traffic safety. Hence, development of the services to support the strategic decision-making is essential. There is a need for centered sources, “common portals” for information. These sources and portals must be easy to use and at hand for everyone (via Digi-TV, via telephone, via Internet). The digital television is a new concept (Penttinen, et. al., 2003b). It enables better and many-sided information services than the old text television. There are still many challenges on its way to be a primary traffic information channel. From users point of view it differs from Internet by several ways. The return channel for interactive use is the biggest issue. What is the best technology for it? To view the sites in Digi-TV the main input device is a remote control with very limited amount of push buttons. This requires the information to be grouped into a hierarchy. Furthermore, the watching distance is greater than in case of a PC. Therefore, the font size must be greater, so not much information can be placed into one page. There are, however, a few factors that defence digital television against PC and Internet. Digital television is faster, when one switches on the television; the connection is enabled at the same time. In addition, almost all has a television, and therefore a connection. By the end of 2007 the analogy broadcasting will be totally replaced by the digital.