OJPA: How can we make alternative journey options clearer following rail disruption?

Disruption on a rail journey is a huge problem. For customers, this is worsened when alternative travel options are not made clear. Snap Out helped to create a solution.

We worked as part of a team within an Innovate UK Acceleration in Rail Project, led by Proxad with the University of Surrey and Manage Places.

An Onward Journey Planning Assistant was developed, using innovative ways of feeding historical and live data through a chatbot. This provided options for people experiencing disruption in a user-friendly way.

Snap Out designed and developed the chatbot using a unique recommendation engine approach to enable users to easily find their onward journey options. We tested the digital prototype with users and designed the user interface based on user feedback.

We were also successful in assisting the project to secure grant funding.


Design and developed a chatbot with a unique recommendation engine approach

Insights from user research and testing that informed prototype development

User interface developed from user testing findings


user testers


One of the most interesting findings was how people used chatbots and the conversational User Interface they expected to use when interacting with the chatbot, possibly influenced by the use of other technologies such as digital voice assistants like Siri.  

“Snap Out played multiple roles in this project. They were the project managers for the Innovate UK project and led on the reporting. Aaron was the technical lead on building the chatbot. The technical architecture of the chatbot drew upon historic and real-time datasets and Chloe led the user research and testing, she helped us understand what our users wanted from this chatbot, which informed the iteration of the prototype. Snap Out played an integral in the project, they were a real joy to work with, we’d highly recommend them.”

Founder, Proxad