Joshi – GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF RAILWAY TIMETABLES 1996

Description

Yateendra Joshi critiques conventional Indian railway timetables as confusing and overloaded with secondary, cryptic information, and proposes a user-friendly graphic format. His prototype for Bombay–Pune links departure and arrival columns with horizontal bars whose lengths represent journey duration, grouping trains into morning, afternoon, evening, and late-evening blocks. The design omits extraneous details (e.g., interstation distances, intermediate times, obscure symbols) while retaining train numbers for booking. Through iterative refinements—adjusting bar styling, column headings, grouping shading, and adding a time scale—Joshi improved legibility. Informal testing with 20 familiar users (given no explanation) showed markedly better performance and strong user approval. Although the graphic timetable occupies more space, it speeds decision-making and reduces user frustration, offering a practical, clarity-focused alternative to the traditional non-graphical format used for decades.