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TAAS: TRAFFIC AS A SERVICERedesigning the Traffic System of 2030

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RÉGIS FRIASis an MA student in New Media at Aal-to Media Lab and co-founder of Índice, interaction design studio based in São Paulo, Brazil.

BERND WILLIis a MSc student in Innovation & Entre-preneurship at ESADE Business School

in Barcelona. He has a very broad business background with practical

experience in Business Development, Innovation Management and Finan-

cial Analysis on an international level. Bernd’s passion is the current para-

digm shift towards collaborative forms of organization in a Third Industrial

Revolution.

NAHIKARI ZUASTIis a MSc student in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at ESADE Business School in Barcelona. She has a back-

ground in Chemical Engineering and experience in the initial stages of advanced products development

in the field of air purification.

BABAK MOHAJERIis a MSc student in Strategy at Aalto University School of Science and Technology. He has a background in Industrial Engineering and experience in working in minerals and metals and oil industries.

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CONTENTSTAAS: Traffic as a Service 1Preamble 4

Foreword 5Executive Summary 6The Brief — Traffic as a Service 7Background 7

Part 1 The Problem Space 12Need Finding 13Interpreting the Findings 13

Part 2 The Solution Space 16Idea Generation 17Idea Validation 17Idea Definition 20Prototyping 21Assumption 21Experiment design 21Result 21But how do the Guerrilla Hubs work? 29Stakeholders map 29Background trends 30Next steps 32

Conclusions 33Design Thinking process recap 34The Social and Refuge Corner 34The Guerrilla Hub 34Recommendations 35

Appendices 36Appendix 1 37Appendix 2 38Appendix 3 39Appendix 4 41Appendix 5 42

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PREAMBLE

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FOREWORDThis report was written as part of and in order to document the process carried out by us during the M!ND/I2P Course organized by Aalto/ESADE. Our chal-lenge was both exciting and a bit scary, as we were supposed to create solu-tions not for a current problem, but for an inexistent scenario, which we then had to imagine. How will the future of transportation look like? What role will the Government have? What role will users and businesses have? What new technologies will arise? Which will disappear? What new behaviours will emerge and what will fade away? What are the most promising business mod-els? These were the kinds of questions we asked ourselves to try and map this terra incognita.

In the process we learned our ways around Design Thinking and were forced (by ourselves and contingency) to think outside of the box and get out of our comfort zone. We managed to work as a team despite the distance (half of us were in Helsinki and the oth-er half in Barcelona) and we tried to keep an open mind towards our goal and also to our team mates’ contribu-tions.

Production moments

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThe Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications (LVM in the Finnish acronym) approached us with an un-usual challenge: to reimagine the trans-portation system for the year 2030. More precisely they wanted us to bring about ideas for Traffic as a Service (TaaS). This report tries to summarize our journey around this little labyrinth and what we found on the way.

Because Design Thinking is not a linear process, here we are not presenting the problem and solution in a chrono-logical order, but rather in form of spac-es (problem and solution, part 1 and 2 respectively). Some of the phases were carried out in the very beginning and some later. The current document is therefore a map of the whole process.

Finally we come up with two proposals, one more adaptive and incremental but still deeply user-centric, the other clearly disrupting the current structure of the transport system. We’re happy to welcome you to explore our concepts: The Social and Refuge Corner! And the Guerrilla Hub!

Barcelona meets Helsinki

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THE BRIEF — TRAFFIC AS A SERVICEThe challenge that The Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications pro-posed to us was: “how could personal transport solutions be produced and purchased as a service?”. And further-more, can we generate “ideas of inno-vative service concepts and new busi-ness models”?

Even though this brief may seem a lit-tle too open it is at the same time fo-cused enough in one area of transport. Its openness leaves room for effective innovation while its focus helps us stay on track as to what to innovate. In the process we opened and closed our ap-proach many times, (as the methodolo-gy requires) and saw the problem from different perspectives.

vidual initiative. Also, the way citizens purchase and consume products and services is changing. Could public trans-port benefit from these new models?

A major challenge of our brief was, of course, that we don’t know how the year 2030 will look like. Of course it is more interesting and fun to dream of wild, inspiring possibilities. And we did this a lot. But always with the warning in the back of our minds that we should be careful with extending current tech-nologies into the future, where they might not belong. We thus did not un-derstand our challenge as to invent the wonder all-in-one technological solu-tion as described in the following.

BACKGROUNDWhere are we heading?Existing transport and communica-tions systems are a legacy of old socie-tal development models. An important challenge in modern countries is to proactively act on fast changes in so-cial organizations and be prepared for the next generation of problems that might come up. Their goal is, thus, to be ahead of changes and help build the future, not just react to them.

The Ministry’s main goal is to become more of an orchestrator in an ecosys-tem that integrates users (citizens) and businesses (service providers). Many solutions for transportation and communication are popping up from the private sector and also from indi-

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Nassim Taleb (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder) states the follow-ing about technology resilience:

If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives an-other decade, then it will be expect-ed to be in print another fifty years. This, simply, as a rule, tells you why things that have been around for a long time are not “aging” like per-sons, but “aging” in reverse. Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectan-cy. This is an indicator of some ro-bustness. The robustness of an item is proportional to its life!

Bearing in mind that our assumptions could be wrong is a way of avoiding traps arising from this look-ahead op-eration. Also, looking into the past is always a good way to understand the present and the future.

Scenarios overviewWe didn’t overlook existing technolo-gies and promises for the next years. Some of those could completely dis-rupt transportation paradigms, so it is important to keep them in mind all the

(image credit: http://obviousmag.org/archives/2011/10/futuro_do_preterito_ou_os_anos_2000_imaginados_em_1900.html)

(Image credit: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOn-TheFutureOfInterac-tionDesign/)

(image credit: http://www.lightlanebike.com/about.html)

time. We categorized the possible evo-lution in three big groups: technologies, behavior and infrastructure. Below, we briefly introduce some examples, as a non-exhaustive inspirational list.

TechnologiesIn 2030 our transportation technolo-gies will definitely look different from what we know today.

Despite all technological changes, some issues will remain the same (McDONALD M. Area 3. Integrated urban traffic man-agement (IUTM), University of Southamp-ton, 2012) such as the ones grouped in the following categories:

• Mobility and Congestion

• Safety and Security

• Energy and Environmental Compatibility

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Mobility and Congestion:Overall volume and traveling for both people and freights is going upward and current traffic management sys-tem cannot respond to this extreme demand in an efficient way. (FTAG. Vi-sion 2050, 2001)

Safety and SecurityTransportation accounts for more than 40,000 fatal incidents in the US and 3.5 million injured each year. Over 90 percent of these are on the Nation’s highways. This trend showed a similar pattern in other countries. Moreover, despite the progress in road safety systems and vehicles, number of these accidents has not been reduced sig-nificantly over the last 15 years. (The Federal Transportation Advisory Group (FTAG),2001)

Energy and Environmental Plan-ningOil still constitutes the biggest re-source for transportation. In fact, it is predicted that the total world output of conventional oil will peak around 2020 at approximately 35 billion bar-rels per year and transportation com-prises a big proportion of this usage. Meanwhile, conventional transporta-tion causes alarming air pollution and

noise pollution. The present transpor-tation system still accounts for 40 per-cent of ozone-forming pollutants, and about 80 percent of carbon monoxide emissions. Such alarming numbers call us for a substantial action. (The Fed-eral Transportation Advisory Group (FTAG),2001)

Technological changes can mitigate these problems via a system called “Integrated Active Transportation Sys-tem (IATS)”. It supports and enables real time archiving and retrieval of data generated by transportation system applications and provides smart appli-cations to use archived information. Thereby, it contributes to predictive information and performance moni-toring systems and makes an efficient decision support system.

In terms of mobility and congestion problems, IATS is capable of economi-cally moving anyone and anything any-where, anytime, on time. These things can happen through the real time sim-ulation systems, asset management, optimization of resources and real time responding. (The Federal Transporta-tion Advisory Group (FTAG),2001)

About the safety issues, IATS can re-

solve problems in human-centered system, lifetime learning and provides an automated system to prevent the likelihood of risk as much as possible.(The Federal Transportation Advisory Group (FTAG),2001)

Finally, for energy and environmental concerns, IATS increases the efficiency of energy use and the transportation system, stimulates use of virtual trans-portation (I.e.: telecommunication) and allocates resources to the most en-vironmental-friendly methods hence promotes land-management planning techniques. (The Federal Transporta-tion Advisory Group (FTAG),2001)

All in all, IATS will enable connected vehicle-infrastructure communication systems to deliver real-time and con-

text-sensitive information to enhance safety, improve the efficiency of road usage and reduce environmental im-pact.(The Federal Transportation Advi-sory Group (FTAG),2001)

On the other hand, Intelligent Trans-port Systems (ITS) is developing very fast. The evolution of hardware and software devices related to traffic sys-tem will lead to the new era of smart traffic in future. The prevalence of mo-bile communication networks to 4G and beyond will deliver constant con-nectivity to vehicles and travelers. Mod-ular traffic and travel services will grow in quality and quantity – where mobile handsets switch to powerful person-al mobility terminals. Moreover, travel guidance, on-line booking and payment facilities are going to integrate with lo-

GLOBAL MOBILITY: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

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cation-based Web 2.0 applications. It will pave the way for data collection and information exchange through social networking websites. (Research*eu. In-telligent transport systems, 2010)

As we can see, the technological chang-es happen with tremendous speed and disruptive innovations shape the new directions toward future of transporta-tion.

BehaviorAlongside the technological side, we see changes and new trends in users behavior ever faster within intercon-nected global world. Also do we see new trends in behavior, and together with evolving technologies, our user behavior changes ever faster within a more interconnected global world.

The Ministry of transport has already identified the behavior changes as one of the unpredictable trends in future. “The central challenge is to under-stand the significance of differing life-style choices to selection of transport.” (Ministry of Transport and Communica-tions. Transport 2030: Major challeng-es, 2007 ).

These changes will affect many parts of future transportations like type of the journey, choosing mediums of trans-port, frequency and length of the trav-eling and perception of future users about value of traveling.

Urbanization and other lifestyles chang-es might affect the way people will look at the transportation in future. On the other hand, global concerns and envi-ronmental issues may trigger different patterns of users’ behavior. In short, it is utmost hard to predict the disruptive patterns in behavior changes due to the myriad of unknown factors.

(Image credit: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3016329/the-future-of-so-cial-transportation-bandwagon-is-help-ing-you-share-cab-rides)

(Image credit: http://www.archdaily.com/464394/hamburg-s-plan-to-eliminate-cars-in-20-years/)

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InfrastructureAll of the mentioned breakthroughs in tech-nology and behavior sides, might be ac-companied by major infrastructure projects that transform our urban environments and make remote areas more accessible.

In this matter, the Organization for Econom-ic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is undergoing an integrated strategic transport Infrastructure needs program to 2030 hori-zon, in particular at whether gateway ports, hubs, and their inland transport connections are inlined with demanding tasks ahead. Several case studies are designed to explore the opportunities and challenges and identi-fy the major key issues respecting the future traffic infrastructures. Consequently, there is a significant need identified to improve the capacity and functions of current infra-structure two or three times more than the present time by 2030. (OECD. International Future Programme, 2011)

However, we still decided that our approach will be fundamentally user-centric due to the nature of our work and time and resource constraints. In this sense we took into con-sideration the future trends in technology and infrastructure, but concentrated on user behavior and innovative revolutionary concepts.

(image credit: http://www.gizmag.com/boswash-share-way-howl-er-yoon/25876/)

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PART 1 THE PROBLEM SPACE

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NEED FINDINGWe set ourselves out into the wild to try to understand how the transport system actually works, what kinds of challenges it faces and what new chal-lenges lie ahead of it. Through direct observations in Helsinki-Finland, Barce-lona-Spain and Munich-Germany (half day each) we found the following needs and challenges:

• Long waiting time on connecting points.

• People don’t interact with each other. But:

• they are willing to interact (at least to some extent)

• they tend to interact more in seats facing each other/providing intimacy (not too crowded)

• contact needs to be estab-lished in the first moment (the more you wait the more challenging it is, awkward)

• People use mobile devices.

• Some people are interested in what others are doing on the mobile.

• People don’t care about ads.

• People display a variety of social

“diseases” (Boredom, Loneliness, Stressful life and sense of Person-al uselessness).

INTERPRETING THE FINDINGSIn addition to these in-depth obser-vations, we also scanned the entire transport chain from an eagle-eye per-spective in order to understand the relationship between the parts in the system. Its main constituents are trans-portation means and their correspond-ing “hubs” (that is train and metro sta-tions, bus terminals, bus stops etc.). We plotted these parts in a reach/speed versus flexibility map and noticed that they form a linear continuum.

Upper on the y axis are the transpor-tation mediums that have the ability to go farther and faster (such as the airplane). Usually they are associated with a more dramatic type of interac-tion, that is, people that need to use them often have to travel great dis-tances and have greater preparation before being able to start the trip. At the far right of the x axis are the mediums that are more flexible and easy to use, often owned by the users themselves. The downside of those is exactly what is the best attribute in the others: speed and reach.

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We assumed that no matter how technology develops in the next few years, these categories are likely to be still present (perhaps with incremental improvements, such as higher speed or more comfort). This is why we decided to focus less on technology innovation (such as trying to come up with a revolutionary flying sin-gle-person module or the like, which would still have to find its way into the system), but more on systemic models of usage and user behaviour. So we set our final goal to be: to provide maximum value through combination of all different mediums of transporta-tion to the end-customers. The following graph illus-trates the idea:

Our first attempt to frame the problem, right in the first week and with this goal in mind, was the statement:

HOW MIGHT WE integrate the future user as a co-creator in a Taas ecosystem that assures efficiency, diversity, security and avoids conflict of interest?

We believe that this brings together all the necessary elements of the network and ad-dresses the main issues (see appendix 1). Even though we rephrased the statement later on in order to get it more concrete we still use this as an overall goal.

Next we started looking at the challenge from the perspective of the connecting points (the hubs, in our terminology). Those are the points of connection in which peo-ple can switch to a different transportation means (i.e. from bus to train, from train to airplane etc.). The big hubs are airports or ports while train stations are the medium/small hubs. This opened up our problem space even further. One of the issues that arose was that many people choose to use private transport means. Of course they do that for several reasons, so we started to in-vestigate why that would be the case and if we could bring to the public system the pos-itive features of the privately owned mean.

REACHtransportation means plotted

according to reach/speed

FLEXIBILITYtransportation means plotted

according to flexibility/lightness

A

B

C

Airplane+ Centralized

+ Distributed

Train

BusCar

Bicycle

FINAL GOAL

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The following graph points out our points of interest (the hubs), problems associated with them and a few first attempt on solution spaces that could address them. We also list positive characteristics of the indi-vidual transport and ask ourselves how these could inspire the public.

In this map we see the transportation means and hubs in green, categorized into our 3 previously ex-plained types by reach and flexibility, 1) long distance, 2) medium distance and 3) short distance. We pointed out in red problem areas a user might encounter on his journey through this transportation system. In blue we brainstormed about first solution ideas to these problems.

After putting all of these reflexions in perspective with our findings from the obser-vations we restated the problem space in the following manner:

HOW MIGHT WE integrate the user of public transport as a co-creator in an enter-tainment & socialization system?

We decided to dip into the “Waiting time” problem area and also to respond to our need findings concerning the “social diseases”.

To dig deeper into this area we created personas (see Appendix 3) to help us visu-alize challenges arising from different types of users and their relationship with the system. We literally imagined their journey through the traffic system, and, in con-nection with real-life observation, identified problems they might encounter.

Waiting time

Price

Speed, Convenience

Stress, Crowded

BIG HUBSTrain, Airplane, Ship

MEDIUM DISTANCEMetro, Bus, Taxi, Car

SHORT DISTANCEBus, Bycicle, Car, Taxi, Walk

1

2

3

Busy Natalia

Single-mom Janet & Young Pete

Blind Marco

Grandma Olga

BIG HUBSTrain, Airplane, Ship

MEDIUM DISTANCEMetro, Bus, Taxi, Car

SHORT DISTANCEBus, Bycicle, Car, Taxi, Walk

1

2

3

Personas applied to the hubs map

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PART 2 THE SOLUTION SPACE

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IDEA GENERATIONEach finding or insight from the previ-ous space opened a different path for solutions. As previously mentioned, we moved forwards and backwards in search for our solution and the ideas presented here were gathered from around the entire process. We pres-ent them already somewhat filtered, for convenience. See appendix 2 for an early example.

Later on in the process we came up with new ideas (in all degrees of refine-ment and development) and catego-rized them into three groups, i.e. solu-tions that:

• decrease waiting time;

• make the wait useful; or

• encourage use of public trans-port.

These categories address the different types of problems. But we also found that they could be grouped by the ser-vice model that tackle each problem. Those are solutions that:

• treat the trip itself as a service; or

• create services around the trip.

In other worlds, we can say that ana-

lyzing this modeled transport map of transport categories and respective hubs, we took two paths in order to find solutions for 2030:

• The first path answers the punc-tional problems we identified in the system and add new services.

• The second path aspires to rein-vent the system as a whole new service, answering to the over-all systemic problem of insuffi-cient integration of the transport means.

With this we reorganized the ideas in the table shown in the next page.

IDEA VALIDATIONIn order to validate if we were following the correct track with our initial ideas, we conducted a small survey (see Ap-pendix 4). Such survey was answered by 47 persons, whose age ranged from 22 up to 38 years old, including people from different countries: Brazil, Finland, Poland, Spain, Greece, Denmark, Unit-ed Kingdom, Ireland, Norway and India.

Then, we extrapolated the results of the survey as the global preferences of daily commuters.

Most of the respondents use the public transport (mainly bus, train and under-ground) instead of the the private one, basically because it is the cheapest, healthy and most ecological option, as well as to avoid traffic jams, even though some of them admit that it is not the fastest way to reach their des-tinations.

Another interesting insight is the fact that, in general, commuters tend to travel between 10 and 30 minutes, not more. What means that they usu-ally spend more time going from one hub to another, or even waiting at the station for the public transport mean to arrive, rather than on the commut-ing time per se. This clearly shows that

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PATHS ANSWERS THE PUNCTIONAL PROBLEMS REINVENT THE SYSTEM AS A WHOLEApproach Services around the Trip Trip as service

Decrease waiting time • Transportation modules

• plug your module to the grid (rent DIY-like module)

• owned seat

• rent a long board

• rent a patinete–suitcase

• Time Management / big data

• Scheduling

• Past data analysis

• Private-like “P2P” planes

Make wait useful, trip as an experience (group or individual)

• Services on the go

• info screens on hubs/nodes and on the ride (back of the seat)

• find a trip partner

• Include service providers into train (Hairdresser…)

• Smart sidewalks

• Goods on the go

• on trip groceries shopping

• Fun on the go

• play games with your trip companion (friends or strang-ers)

• Moving shared spots

• art galleries

• night clubs

• garden

Encourage use of pub-lic transport

• Increase comfort

• massage

• intimacy (private compartments)

• Journey planner + calendar

• Business class wagon/area

Our Recommendation Rincon social (Social Corner, Refuge Corner) Guerrilla hub

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there is more value for the users on creating a radical new transport system rather than on adding new services to the existing one.

Nevertheless, we still analyzed how the Min-istry of transport could improve the travel ex-perience throughout the offer of different ac-tivities, such as allowing chatting spaces or sim-ply providing the basics for a relaxing travel (e.g. books, music, newspa-pers).

Then, going back to how the public transport could be improved so that private owners would switch to public means, we analyzed differ-ent options. As expected, commuters prioritize the aspects of saving time (waiting and travelling), saving money and having more flexibility (hubs’ geographical location, departures and arrivals).

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IDEA DEFINITIONa. The first path: Answering to punctional problems In this path, we planned to tackle some punctional problems ( this term is used to describe non-functional problems in the traffic system). Our aim was to add new services around the current traffic system. In this respect, we identified that the social diseases like loneliness, boredom and stress are increasing in the cities. Further, in the “Make wait useful” via “Services around the trip” section, we found all aspects around gamification and increased interaction especially promising, and dived deeper into this. we presumed if we create a situation to involve people in contact each others during transportation, it will lead to socializing people and more delightful traveling.

b. The second path: Reinvent the system as a wholeIn the second path, we first clearly fo-cused on the time management idea retrospectively on analysing past. we chose the approach of “Trips as a ser-vice” in order to “decrease waiting time”

This approach initially forwarded us into the future through scheduling functions, as explored in the following

experiments section.

Later on, we decided to find the rela-tionship between stakeholders and services offered by or for them. We found that there are patterns emerging from these practices, as can be seen in the following table. These patterns are also future trends, that help us identify challenges and solutions for 2030. we found the following:

• Peer-to-peer (P2P)

• On-demand (B2P)

• Customization

• Open-source (system design, rules)

• Co-creation (behaviour)

• Big data

• The commons

STAKEHOLDER EXISTING EXAM-PLES

PATTERN/ROLE

Individuals • Car sharing

• Bike sharing

• Peer-to-peer (P2P)

• Co-creation

• CustomizationBusinesses • Taxi

• Lotação

• Car rental

• On-demand (B2P)

• Big data

• Shift from owned products towards service solutions

Government • Open source party (Denmark)

• Marco civil brasileiro

• Open source regu-lation

• Co-creation

• The commons

We discovered them by analysing the current services offerings and plotting them according to the type of vehicle and target audience (see table beside).

Next we analysed in which road trans-portation means each of the patterns

MEAN OF TRANSPORT (LINE) BUSINESS MODEL (COLUMNS)

PROFESSIONAL SER-VICE (COMMERCIAL DRIVER)

RENT SHARED RENT P2P SHARING (E.G. BLABLACAR, PRIVATE PERSON DRIVES)

AIRBNB

Car

Bicycle

Motorbike

Fancy Module

repeat and where they could be ap-plied (see table on the next page).

These patterns, especially Peer-to-Peer, Open-Source, Co-Creation and Big Data form the basis for our next tentative solution: The Guerrilla Hub.

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PROTOTYPINGPrototyping. Path 2The coffee experiment (Category: 1. decrease waiting time) (ca. 50 participants, 1,5 days)

Key assumptions: willingness to schedule, willingness to reschedule, commitment to schedule, monetary personal incentives, social incentive.

One of our first approaches was to check if it is possi-ble to change users’ behaviour on their every-day use of transport. For instance, if we could or if we were able to design a system that can react to user’s de-mand depending on a specific date or time of the day we would have to know if they are willing to schedule and reschedule in advance their trips. In Helsinki it is already possible to do this with the Reittiopas, a widely used tool to help citizens navigate the city. This is syn-chronized with the buses and trains timetables. The idea was to have a system that used user’s information on schedule.

Therefore we asked people at Aalto design factory to schedule their coffee-break for the next day, in order to test “willingness to schedule”. Our second step was to ask people to reschedule their coffee-break in order to test their flexibility. If we could bring people to avoid trav-eling on peak times we could balance out traffic demand and offer much easier. At the day itself we tested people commitment, so if they would show up for their coffee, and also tested the effectiveness of monetary and social punishment, in case they would not commit.

Bernd with some of our experiment subjects.

ASSUMPTION EXPERIMENT DESIGN

RESULT

willingness to schedule schedule your coffee for tomorrow

Ok (idea killer)

willingness to resched-ule

reschedule your coffee for tomorrow

Ok

commitment to sched-ule

attendance check 74%

monetary personal in-centives

0,25€ direct fee on non-comitment

Slightly effective

social incentive 0,25€ peer-penalty Highly effective

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Lessons learned

We found that the social incentives are stronger than monetary incentives, or in other words loss of trust is more stronger than loss of money. One rea-son for it might be, our sample consist-ed of students who already knew each others,and penalty was quite few in terms of money(only 50 cents for pen-alty). Therefore, our test in this term might be considered slightly biased.

By the same token,victims often inter-ested in knowing the free-riders names indicating to the person to person re-lationship.

We realized that our assumption needs user behaviors’ change which calls for long-term strategy and effort. Further-more, spontaneous decisions for trav-eling could not be answered in our solution. All in all, we concluded that our approach necessitates substantia-ble change in users behavior, liability to follow the schedule and social norms. Therefore, we decided to cross out this idea and follow different paths.

Prototyping. Path 1Fun on the go (Category: 2. make waiting time useful and 3. encourage use of public transport) (12 intensive interactions, 1 afternoon)

Key assumptions: willingness to interact with strangers, games as ice-breakers.

To tackle the what we called “social dis-eases” we decided to test if people are willing to interact with strangers during their trip. For the beginning we there-fore designed a simple experiment in the public train of Barcelona: We took multiplayer board games and asked people to play with us. Meanwhile we tested how open and welcoming they were towards interaction with strang-ers, and also interviewed them about the solution of gaming itself, and if they could imagine to approach strangers themselves, so to break the ice them-selves.1

Lessons learned

We found that most of the people are willing to interact with others while travelling, and for this purpose playing games is a good way to “break the ice” with strangers. Nevertheless, there are some insights which must be taken into account: only people whose travel im-plies long distance transport are willing for it; they would not be the ones tak-ing the initiative to propose someone to play with them; some travellers do not feel the absence of interaction as

an issue; time gamification is not the most attractive option (also live music, chats, etc); and, last but not least, some of them preferred to take advantage of their own devices so that they could continue playing once out from the transport.

We realized that our assumption needs user behaviors’ change which calls for hidden motivation and effort. Furthermore, strategies for breaking the ice could not be answered in our solution. All in all, we concluded that our approach necessitates substantia-ble change in users behavior, thus, we decided to further develop such idea in the next experiment: not being the ones starting the games, but just pro-viding the required assets for it.

Nahikari with some of our experiment subjects.

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Testing & RefiningAlthough we found that most of the people were interested in playing with strangers and liked to interact after a first period of shyness, our test per-sons explained to us that they would not be ready to do the first step and to break the ice themselves. Therefore the next experiment needed to check this assumption, weather people would break the ice themselves if they are only slightly encouraged to so.

Very interactive moments in the train

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Social interactions on the goKey assumptions: willingness to “break the ice” and start interacting with other people by themselves. (4 hours in 2 train wagons)

For this experiment we thus developed a more complex design. We created four designated areas within one com-partment in a train, which we called “El Rincón Social” - “The Social Corner”.

The assumption : we presumed if we create a situation to involve people in social activity and ask them to partici-pate in our experiment, it will lead to socializing people, our main goal was to create an environment people can eas-ily interact and share their ideas and enjoy during their traveling.

The Experiment idea: we designed some attractive flip charts in four groups: 1- Gaming, 2- Referral , 3- learning 4- chit-chat. We stuck them in a wagon and tried to change that area to a type of socializing zone, to see if people would pick-up the concept by themself and start interacting with each others. Generally Speaking, in gaming area we offered simple games like board game, in referral our goal was to share information like best plac-

Trips can be fun

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es to visit at Barcelona, in learning we aimed sharing knowledge for instance in different languages and in chit-chat we pointed an open conversation.

Lessons learned

we found out breaking the ice and cre-ating a situation to stimulate people for socializing is harder that what we presumed. Almost no one would like to participate in the game if we did not intervene. After our request people were still reluctant. Maybe we need to change the type of experiment or may-be we need some pre-campaign party to inform people in advance and pave the way for our experimentation. An-other things that we did not consider is the travel distance as we basically fo-cused on the short term travels where people are more in hurry and may in-herently be reluctant to involve in every social activity. For the next experiments this thing should be taken into account. For future steps,we pounder sequence of why questions in order to identify the major causes of failure. We iden-tified some reasons in this respect. As the process demonstrates, reasons 1

and 3 allude to modify the experiment. Nonetheless, it needs public support. Thus, we think Ministry of Transport can elaborate in this way considering our findings.

For reason 2, we propose a new con-cept that we call ”refuge corner” or “Rin-con Anti-Social”. Since we wonder peo-ple’s daily life is already too busy and they no longer would like to socialize when they travel.

Therefore, transportation system can be adapted to this behaviour change and offers customized service, both for people who look for more interaction and fun in the “Social Corner” and for those of us stressed from every-day life who prefer to relax and minimize dis-traction in the “Refuge Corner”.

We propose a “Clear your head / Relax-ation / day Spa” area in which people would

disconnect with others, read books or listen to the music without being dis-turbed and redeem from their stressful daily life.

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Prototyping. Path 2The Guerrilla HubsKey assumptions: how to combine max-imum reach and maximum flexibility through new business models integrating all categories of transport and all stake-holders.

The idea

The Guerrilla system is a physical and digital platform that integrates the traf-fic system, optimizing the use of exist-ing assets and providing travelers fast and less costly types of travels.

The major advantage of this offering is that, in contrast to other technical solutions, Guerrilla Hubs do not need substantial infrastructure manage-ment and capital investment. However, it builds on the co-creation and open source solutions and simultaneously is able to involve private companies and investors by means of its sustainable business model.

The Business Model Canvas proposed for the Guerrilla Hubs helps to under-stand this concept:

CUSTOMER SEGMENTS

• C o m m u t e r s without mean of transport

• C o m m u t e r s with mean of transport

• Non-commut-ers with mean of transport

• Private busi-ness offer-ing different means (e.g. rental car) and services (e.g. taxi) of trans-port

• Space provider

VALUE PROPO-SITIONS

• Descentralized physical and digital platform that integrates multiple traf-fic systems, optimizing the use of assets and providing travelers fast and less costly types of travels. Flexible loca-tion according to the demand.

• Provide trust and access to new demand to the existing and innovative businesses.

KEY ACTIVITIES• Match supply

and demand

• Provide digital and physicial platform

• Legalise ex-isting sharing & rental busi-nesses

• Garanty qual-ity of services (trust)

COST STRUCTURE• IT: digital platform development and continuous im-

provement

• Physical infraestructure (if provided by the Govern-ment)

• Employees in the hubs

• Marketing and commercial expenditures

REVENUE STREAMS• Annual fee as GeH member (then the Government

can identify each of the users)

• Percentage fee on every transaction (more flexibility, can incentivice certain means of transport)Garanty quality of services (trust)

KEY RESOURCES• Digital platform

& IT support

• Administrative infrastructure

• Transportation in frastructre (roads etc)

CUSTOMER RE-LATIONSHIP

• Engagement of the customers as co-creators

• Transparency of services

• Real integra-tion of custom-er feedback (from the pay-ment moment to the travel ex-perience)

CHANNELS• Digital platform

• Physical plat-form

KEY PARTNERS• Commuters

• Government

• Private car/bike owners

• B u s i n e s s e s (e.g. Bla Bla car, rental car com-panies, Taxi, Bus compa-nies, Bicing…)

• IT provider

• Space provider (Government or private own-er)

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As it has been men-tioned before, the cur-rent transport system is inefficient: it is highly centralized, hierarchi-cally organized and in-flexible. The Guerrilla Hubs will disrupt this ex-isting system by means of a distributed grid of physical hubs through-out the city which are connected via a journey planner app.

All stakeholders in-volved (individuals, busi-nesses and the Govern-ment) can make use of such hubs, and all of them will benefit from the new platform as ex-plained in the diagram on the next page.

As can be seen in the following scheme, the different players can be categorized in three lev-els: Demand, Offer and Facilitator. Several ben-efits arise on each of the levels.

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Individuals offering a ride in their car (P2P car sharing)

Public Buses

Taxis

Individuals using the private cars provided to the system for offering

an Uber service

Individuals who lend their car, motorbike or bicycle to

the Guerrilla community

Individuals who seek for transport solutions=> Possibility to bundle demand

Public car and bicycle sharing

The ministry as a facilitator and garantor of trust and

working of the system

Commercial car and bicycle sharing

Businesses might provide the physical hubs as well

Individuals

Legend

Public

Businesses

Car rental companies

Tran

spor

t Se

rvic

es

Tran

spor

t A

sset

s

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BUT HOW DO THE GUERRILLA HUBS WORK?Here it is an scheme of a User Journey experience:

STAKEHOLDERS MAPAnd their respective patterns

• Journey planner

• Choose G-hub

• User profile

• Pricing tool

• Options

• Cost

• Offer-demand bal-ancing

• Info/fun on the go (extra services)

• Feedback for user

Decide destination

Choose transport options

Go to G-hub

Check into system

WaitChoose

transport options

Go to des-tination

Walk top gate

Drop-off check out

GH

Peer-to-peer (P2P)Co-creationCustomisationOpen Source

On-demand (B2P)Big Data

Open source regulation

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BACKGROUND TRENDSAs a way to see if the Guerrilla Hubs would be even more necessary in the future, we analyzed the trends of to-tal inland passenger transport and road investment Infrastructure in Fin-land from 2004 to 2011. Our analysis showed that both trends have been faced a slight increase in recent years.

From the prior trends we extrapolated that in 2030 the total number of inland

traveling in Finland would reach around 90,000 Million Passenger-Kilometers, which is approximately 17% more than on current times.

We think that the Guerrilla Hub idea can decelerate both trends and at the same time it can save tangible amount of road investment infrastructure by optimizing the use of resources and customizing its configuration.

Total in land passenger transport in Finland and prediction in 2030

Data Source: (OECD Finland, 2014)

Investment in road transport infrastructure In Finland Data Source: (OECD Finland, 2014)

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The experimentIn order to check if this new system is feasible or not, we have visual-ized the “Guerrilla Hub” concept through a video (see the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoQ3QbeY4oU) and further validated it with Forum Virium Helsinki. Forum Virium is an innovation unit within the Helsinki City Group that develops new digital services and urban innovations in cooperation with companies, the City of Helsinki, other public sector organizations, and Helsinki residents.

The feedback received from Forum Virium is really positive. In fact, their representative, Roope Ritvos, has shown their willingness to help the Ministry make this piloting happen in real life since they al-ready have good structures and “sandbox” where to pilot this kind of things. Their Agenda would be twofold, one getting this kind of fancy stuff into Kalasatama, and the other on opening up the city to be used as prototyping platform in general.

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Modify Reittiopas’ Journey Plan

Engage new stakeholders (individuals & businesses)

Test real Hubs with the help of Forum Virium

1

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NEXT STEPSFrom the patterns (peer-to-peer, on-de-mand, customization, open-source, co-creation, big data, the commons) presented at the part 2 of this work we learned that society is mature enough to deal with distributed thinking and working. This means that the very rules system for the proposed solution, the Guerrilla Hubs, can be really created collaboratively. For this reason, we give some suggestions about how to con-tinue with the GeH project in order to make it real:

1. First, it is necessary to adapt the current Reittiopas’ Journey Plan by a adding a user’s profile and creating a community platform where people can interact. It is extremely important that, in such platform, the user is able to cus-tomize the system according to his commuting preferences (e.g. time, cost, environmental impact, comfort).

2. Second, it is highly recommend-able to cooperate with Forum Vir-ium Helsinki in order to test the Hubs with real infrastructures.

3. And third, it is essential to engage the rest of stakeholders (busi-nesses and individuals) through marketing campaigns, which can actually be done in the actual public transport means, and con-tacting directly to existing busi-nesses conducting nowadays this kind of collaborative transport.

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CONCLUSIONS

35

As stated in the opening sessions of this report, throughout the process we went back and forth from one stage to another, now diverging problem areas and ideas, now converging. Following is a picture that summarizes the phases through which we went and places each space in perspective with similar approaches while showing the continu-ous oscillation between them.

DESIGN THINKING PROCESS RECAP

This deeply user centric and need fo-cused approach is at the origin of our two concepts. The further alterations allowed us to develop upon our initial ideas and helped us shape the final concepts: The Social and Refuge Cor-ner - An added service to the existing public transport service. And the Guer-rilla Hub - A new disruptive transport service concept!

THE SOCIAL AND REFUGE CORNERThis solution is a response to the social diseases we’ve discovered in our urban society: “Loneliness, Boredom and Stress”. As the traffic system is an important part of people’s everyday life it offers a great opportunity to tackle this deeply rooted problems in society. The Social Corner in public trains and metros gives commuters the possibility to get in touch with other people, in an informal but facilitated envi-ronment, so there trip becomes at the time more entertaining and also an opportu-nity to establish more contacts as response to boredom and loneliness. The Refuge Corner is basically the contrary. It offers commuters increased intimacy, a place with minimal distraction, noise or contact with other travellers. This way commuters will have a choice according to their current preferences that increases the attractive-ness of the public transport means as an added service to the already existing ser-vice system.

THE GUERRILLA HUBThe Guerrilla Hub is our disruptive proposal for a completely new transport service as response to our key finding: The missing integration of transport means, services and stakeholders. In this sense the Guerrilla Hub concept offers a physical and dig-ital platform that closes the gab between today’s transport offer and demand. It integrates the public sector, businesses and individuals in a co-creation eco-system that maximizes efficiency and effectiveness for commuters and service or asset pro-viders. We strongly believe in this holistic approach, based on the key patterns of the future: Co-creation, Peer-to-peer and open source.

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RECOMMENDATIONSThe city as a lab. Prototype Guerrilla Hub.From the patterns (peer-to-peer, on-demand, custom-ization, open-source, co-creation, big data, the com-mons) presented at the part 2 of this work we learned that society is mature enough to deal with distributed thinking and working. This means that the very rules system for the solution can be created collaboratively.

Design thinking could be embedded in the implemen-tation of the solution: much like we did during this project the Ministry could scale up the solution with-out the need for big investment. It would only need to implement the thinking behind our own development and increment the idea with ever greater detail and degree of readiness, testing and letting people use it while creating — learning quickly with the success and failures.

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APPENDICES

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APPENDIX 1The following is our very first brainstorming on the dif-ferent aspects of our problem area. The result of this is our first broad HOW MIGHT WE question.

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APPENDIX 2The following is one of the tables we created in order to help us decide what to experiment and which direction to go. Each idea was given points according to some criteria and the winner idea (the first on the list) was the one we focused on to experiment.

SOLUTION DESCRIPTION NEWNESS USABILITY FEASIBILITY TOTALReorganize existing mediums in integrat-ed service system

8 9 7 24

Replace existing cars with modular train system Lego rails( adapt to demand)

9 5 5 19

Combine mediums of transport jump-on – jump off / eliminate hubs

10 10 2 22

Construction of virtual + real traveling ( virtual connection/rooms in hub)

6 3 10 19

Tracking traffic on demand, maximum use of information

7 6 10 23

Passenger as energy producers 5 8 9 23Use of fun in transportation: gamification, movie theater and more entertainment

4 2 10 16

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APPENDIX 3Example of full persona profile:

Grandma Olga

Who am I? Age 78 Nationality Finnish Job Former office

secretary for local town council

Home Countryside, small town

Transportation mediums used

Bus, taxi

Reason to use your product/solution: (Transportation needs)

Reasons to buy your product/solution:

1. I need to travel to the city in order to visit my grandchildren and to buy stuff from the pharmacy

2. I do bus-tours to the south of Europe once a year with other retired people

There is no alternative, as I cannot drive a car anymore myself. Also bike is no option. I take the public bus

My interests:

1. Playing cards 2. Read the newspaper 3. My grandchildren

My personality: 1. I don’t like spontaneity 2. I want to plan everything 3. Security! Calm

My Skills: 1. I can knit, and my grandchildren all have socks made by myself

My Dreams:

1. To win the lottery, I play every day 2. That my grandchildren become doctors

My Relationship with Technology:

1. I do not use computers. 2. I have a mobile phone, but I only use it to call my relatives 3. My grandson showed me google and youtube, and I find it

amazing, but I will never get used to this. Allt his internet etc is so complex! I’m too old for this shit. That’s for young people.

4. I don’t trust very new technology. In Paris they have Metros without drivers! This scares me!

Busy Natalia

Who am I? Age

32 Nationality USA Job

Management Consutlant Home Goes where her company sends her. Currently Helsinki Transportation

mediums used Flights, rental cars,

Reason to use your product/solution: (Transportation needs)

Reasons to buy your product/solution:

1.

1.

My interests:

1.

My personality:

1.

My Skills:

1.

My Dreams:

1.

My Relationship with Technology:

1.

Single Mom-Janet Who am I? Age

35 Nationality

UK Job

Nurse, Hospital

Home

City centre

Transportation mediums used Car, Bus, Metro, Train

Reason to use your product/solution: (Transportation needs) Reasons to buy your product/solution:

1.

1.

My interests: 1.

My personality: 1.

My Skills: 1.

My Dreams: 1.

My Relationship with Technology:

1.

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Little Mikko“

Who am I?

Age 8 Nationality Finnish

Job Elementary school

Home city suburb

Transportation mediums used

Bus/Family car/Bicycle

Reason to use your

product/solution: (Transportation needs)

Reasons to buy your

product/solution:

1. 1.

My interests:

1.

My personality:

1.

My Skills:

1.

My Dreams:

1.

My Relationship

with Technology:

1.

Family Schmidt

Who am I?

Age Nationality

Job Home

Transportation mediums used

Reason to use your

product/solution: (Transportation needs)

Reasons to buy your

product/solution:

1. 1.

My interests:

1.

My personality:

1.

My Skills:

1.

My Dreams:

1.

My Relationship

with Technology:

1.

Young Pete

Who am I?

Age 14 Nationality Spanish

Job Highschool Home City suburbs

Transportation mediums used

Bicycle, skateboard, bus, train, family car

Reason to use your

product/solution: (Transportation needs)

Reasons to buy your

product/solution:

1. 1.

My interests:

1.

My personality:

1.

My Skills:

1.

My Dreams:

1.

My Relationship

with Technology:

1.

Blind Marco

Who am I?

Age 47 Nationality Algeria

Job Software developer at Nokia

Home Helsinki City center

Transportation mediums used

Metro, Taxi, Bus, Airplaine

Reason to use your

product/solution: (Transportation needs)

Reasons to buy your

product/solution:

1. 1.

My interests:

1.

My personality:

1.

My Skills:

1.

My Dreams:

1.

My Relationship

with Technology:

1.

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APPENDIX 4Survey we did to validate our ideas

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• Identity of the person

• Time of arrival

• Is this person on time according to his/her scheduling?

• Does this person have to pay for the coffee (as a punishment), is the coffee fully paid by the sys-tem or does he/she have to pay a small fee be-cause of someone else late arrival?

• Was it easy to schedule?

• Has the coffee time been rescheduled? If not, why not? Did this person have problems with the rescheduling?

APPENDIX 5Questionaire we did to people partici-pating in the “Coffee scheduling proto-type”

• What is the impact of the extra incentive on the acceptance of re-scheduling?

• What is the impact of a personal extra fee -0.5 on commitment?

• What is the impact of the negative result / extra fee applied on the next user?

• Because of the not-commitment of the previous user, you got only half coffee paid. How do you feel about it?

• What are this person’s feelings about the fact that because of him/her (late arrival), another person suffers?

• Other comments

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