Smart Cities Challenge

A Smart Cities Challenge submission about mobility for a studio class in Service Design.

This proposal focuses on the experience of using transit, particularly bus and community bus systems within Metro Vancouver and seeks to make the experience happier and more complete. It follows goals in alignment with the Greenest City Action Plan and Transportation 2040.

Spring 2018

 
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Skills

Design Research
Service Design
UX Design
UI Design

 

Objective

Create a submission for the federal Smart Cities Challenge, a federal initiative to bring up quality of life in communities across Canada. 

This project was carried out with fellow interaction designer Britt Williams. 


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Exploration

This project focuses on the local cities of Vancouver and Surrey. To find a good space to work in Britt and I reviewed local initiatives, settling on the Greenest City Action Plan as a useful space to be working in with alignment to values of the cities that are our design targets.  We narrowed down our area to transportation + mobility and at this point thought the project would centre cars drivers as the core user group.

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Research

We conducted field research, literature reviews, analyzed case studies in other smart cities, talked to urban design experts, attended civic tech meetups and prototyped service touchpoints and artefacts to research and better understand our problem space. 


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Iteration

We are currently using service blueprints and ecosystems in addition to conducting further user interviews and tests to iterate our touchpoints and artefacts to refine the overall service design.

Next steps are to continue rapid iterations, create storyboards, video prototypes and style tiles.

Analysis

Through research process our project pivoted to focus on transit users to further use big data over infrastructure and access more users within the problem space. This adjustment makes the project align more readily with a wide user group and mobility trends within the region. 


Outcomes

Check out a video prototype.

See our presentation and process book.