

ProRail is the management organization of all rails and stations in the Netherlands. Its tasks include maintenance, surveillance and security.
Problem: ProRail employees use digital technology every day. However, existing technologies develop rapidly. This offers many opportunities for organizations like ProRail to innovate and to improve things. One area of improvement where the company seeks advice for is their train dispatcher training. Here, it is essential that people can work under high pressure, without making any mistakes. It is a hard job and that is why the training has a pass rate of under 50%. The consequence: a shortage of train dispatchers in the Netherlands.
Because the company cannot find a direct cause and solution itself, it enabled an external party to help. This company, called Ordina, is focused on the provision of ICT services to governments, financial institutions, the industry and healthcare. In this case, the Ordina works together with the Advanced Business Creation students to find a solution.
Primary mission: come up with a concept to increase the amount of train dispatchers, by increasing the pass rate of the training system and extending employability of already employed train dispatchers.
Secondary mission: to include gaming in the concept. We didn't like this limitation at first, but later we saw it as a good challenge.
Problem Finding
For educational purposes, our team started off by doing research about the current micro- and megatrends in the educational sector. From there, we could discover new paths for innovation. One important megatrend we found was increasing sustainability. Our school assignment was to process information about this megatrend within the educational sector in an infographic. You can see the final version of the infographic (editer: me) here below (unfortunately, the file size is too large to be uploaded in full resolution).

Ideation & Concepting
Our idea had to be a solution to the clients' problem, while at the same time involving gaming and sustainability. It was not an easy task. Nevertheless, we held brainstorming sessions and came up with a couple of tens of ideas. Again, we had to select just one.
Our final concept was a digital videogame that could be played online between both students and employees.