Bhaven Chauhan & Chanel Lee
Service Design Lead
Transport for NSW
In defence of a long pause: Designing better through lived experience
Design Research track
In defence of a long pause: Designing better through lived experience
Designing inclusive public transport requires more than testing in controlled environments. To inform the next generation of suburban trains in NSW, our team conducted contextual research interviewing people with disability, travelling on active train services. Researchers journeyed alongside participants, many with multiple disabilities, observing real trips from planning through to boarding, travelling, and alighting. Each session lasted up to 4 hours, allowing time for silence, reflection, and trust to build, surfacing insights that shorter, task-based research would not. This approach exposed barriers often missed in traditional research, including the complexity of the platform-to-train interface and the ways "priority" extends beyond seating to include space, visibility, and confidence.
Delivering research in a live operational environment required navigating risk, aligning with operators and frontline staff, and designing tailored support for participants. Over two weeks, participants shared unfiltered experiences of frustration, exclusion, and resilience, providing a level of depth not typically achieved in structured testing. In this session, we will share how to design and deliver contextual research in complex environments, work respectfully with participants with lived experience of disability, and translate qualitative insight into practical design decisions.
Bhaven Chauhan
Bhaven Chauhan is a Senior Service Designer at Transport for NSW with over 16 years of international experience across the UK, France and Australia. As an industrial designer, he worked across kitchenware, homeware, furniture, consumer electronics, tools for home improvement and supporting start-ups.
In recent years he entered the world of service and customer experience design, giving him the opportunity to influence the entire end-to-end customer journey and apply his passion for inclusivity across public transport fleet, infrastructure and services.
Chanel Lee
Chanel Lee is a human-centred design practitioner who helps organisations turn complexity into clarity. With a career spanning industrial design, design management, brand strategy and communication, she has worked with some of Australia’s leading brands and more recently at Transport for NSW, where she focused on service design, complex systems and engagement.
Chanel craves simplicity with integrity; creating solutions that are thoughtful, practical and inclusive. She is passionate about improving experiences for organisations, employees and customers alike, with a particular focus on advocating for vulnerable communities.