Organization
National transport
Industry:
National Transport
Services:
Strategic Web Design · Consulting · Accessibility · Usability
.. technical
✓ Strategic UX Design · ✓ UI interface design · ✓ Engineering · ✓ Visuals & images optimization · ✓ Web Development · ✓ WCAG Accessibility · ✓ Search engine optimization ·
Project Overview
The Challenge
NS handles over a million travelers every day. The old website was slow, difficult to use on mobile, and hard for many screen reader users. Keyboard-only users couldn't access important journey planning features.
During peak hours, delays made the website more of a problem than a help. The users are very diverse: daily commuters needing quick updates, elderly travelers with tricky layouts, and international tourists unfamiliar with Dutch geography.
The urgent goal was to create a modern, responsive front-end that feels fast, works on all devices, and meets government accessibility standards - without disrupting the real-time services millions depend on.
Challenge
- Context
The Dutch Railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen - NS) is the National passenger railway operator in the Netherlands, serving over a million travelers daily.
Over the years, NS has undergone several digital transformations, and I was at the forefront of one of them. - Challenge
The challenge was to replace the old, static architecture with a dynamic AngularJS front-end, modernizing the user interface and boosting performance without disrupting the real-time travel information that millions depend on.
Also, as a semi-government organization, the solution had to meet strict Accessibility standards and serve a highly diverse group of users, from daily commuters to international tourists.
Solution
Role and Summary:
Creative and technical role within different teams at NS, often responsible for bridging the gap between NS's legacy infrastructure and modern user expectations.
Daily roles as focused on designing and developing accessible, responsive interface components within the AngularJS framework.
Also collaborated closely with the NS product team to ensure the new front-end layer delivered a seamless, reliable experience across all devices and user scenarios.
Team
Transitioned across various sectors, enabling me to effectively collaborate with a diverse range of stakeholders, managers, designers, developers, testers and more.
This phase involved close collaboration with Java back-end developers to integrate the UI within the Content Management System (CMS) and to rigorously test the overall website performance, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and speed.
Impact:
The modernization effort resulted in a measurably faster, more reliable user experience for millions of Dutch travelers. The new components reduced friction in the journey planning flow and significantly improved the platform's accessibility posture, aligning NS with both user expectations and regulatory standards.
Results
The modernized front-end delivered measurably faster journey planning for millions of travellers.
Real-time updates arrived without page refreshes, mobile usability jumped, and accessibility barriers were removed - aligning NS with both user expectations and regulatory standards.
The modular foundation paved the way for future digital improvements without a single point of failure.
