Understanding the pulse of the city.

User Research for Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe

We researched the needs of passengers for sound and voice in public transport. In this way, we created a basis for the new "Symphony of the City" developed by our colleagues from why do birds.

Services
User Research, Shadowing, Interviews, Qualitative User Research

The problem

An acoustic patchwork quilt.

BVG, Berlin's public transport company, carries one billion passengers through the city every year – people from 190 countries, all with individual expectations of their perfect journey. The most important thing: arriving safely.
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In the past, a multitude of announcements and signal tones in the various BVG vehicles caused confusion. This makes getting around the city a pure stress factor for passengers. BVG, known for its strong brand presence, needed a uniform sound concept including brand sounds.

The goal

The capital in focus.

While why do birds provided a strong concept for the brand sound, it also had to be used to develop a whole range of new, uniform orientation sounds for the vehicles and to find an optimally intelligible voice for all station announcements and other recordings. We approached both tasks in user research at BVG internally and with passengers externally.

In shadowings and interviews, we rode the bus, tram and subway with a selected group of passengers. Regardless of age, gender, educational background, language skills, frequent or occasional passengers: everyone should be guided safely and easily through the city acoustically. Also on board: BVG employees, representatives for mobility-impaired passengers and the customer advisory council. In this way, we not only gathered important insights for the audio branding process, but also received feedback from all perspectives and tested results live in vehicles.

Since the beginning of 2022, the capital's public transportation system now has a new sound. Uniform, barrier-free and colorful like Berlin.

The heart on your sleeve.

What does a voice in public transportation need to be able to do? And whose voice can fulfill all the criteria? Our answer after a long casting process: Berlin dubbing artist and actress Philippa Jarke.

‍In over 100 hours in the studio, around 4200 audio files were recorded for all stops and other announcements.

An image of Philippa Jarke who is the new corporate voice for the BVG in Berlin- Philippa smiles into the camera and has a microphone in her left hand. She is in the studio with why do birds, the sound branding agency that casted her.

From the studio to the ear.

The in-depth exploration of all parameters that influence our perception in urban traffic guarantees a result with resonance.

Thanks to the new brand music, sound logo, voice and all signal tones, BVG has a holistic, unique audio branding – with a lot of potential to be used at all brand touchpoints.

An insight into a person playing an instrument in the studios of why do birds in Berlin.

»Passengers orient themselves differently, announcements and sounds must be able to assert themselves in the urban jungle. Whether bus, streetcar or subway -our uniform brand sound not only has to sound like BVG, first and foremost it has to work. And that's what we took into account through user research.«
– Christian Chitralla, BVG brand strategist in BVG's corporate communications department

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