14/01/19 - UNDERSTAND (II) - User Profile and problem statement (II)

In the afternoon session, we finished crafting our user profile canvas which we started yesterday. The citizen persona consists of different individuals in different life stages. We created a family with two (part-time) working parents and three children (one studying at DHBW, one going to school and one still sitting in the stroller). The family also has a grandfather in a wheelchair and an elderly grandmother. The whole family is in the upper-middle class and the parents are members in the green party. Their hobbies are taking place in the area around Langenau.

With regards to mobility, the jobs that need to be done by the family is getting to the sports club, going to work/school/
daycare, doing the grocery shopping and meeting friends and joining meetings from the green party in Stuttgart. Doing so, the family is eager to be punctual, getting there fast and in an environmental friendly way. When taking the public transportation, it is important for them to have few changes (e.g. from train to bus) and a good time schedule.

The pains and gains of mobility for the family are the following. On the one hand they have a good train connection to the DHBW in HDH so that the son saves money because he does not need a car. There are also good sidewalks and a safe surrounding in Langenau and elderly people like the grandfather are picked up by bus to get to the day-care. The car offers the family flexibility and independence as well as increased accessibility. On the other hand they are also facing high gas prices, a lot of traffic, few parking spots and environmental restrictions concerning the Diesel cars. While the grandfather is reliable on the day-care, bad weather conditions can result in slippery sidewalks and delays or cancellations of the public transportation. In the observation phase in Langenau, we should examine to which extent these pains and gains are correct and applicable to the citizens of Langenau. We finally presented our persona description and so did the other groups with their personas: the local government, the mobility service providers, the companies and innovative (e-)mobility providers.

In the last part of the session we started describing the problem by defining the ideal, the reality and the consequences of the current situation and the proposal to solve the problem. This complete problem statement should cover the points we collected from the articles in the morning. We only got to the ideal and reality description, which were:

IDEAL: Ideally, all stakeholder groups have access to affordable and available mobility services while benefitting from an environmental friendly and safe technology and infrastructure.

REALITY: By now, public transportation options are limited in terms of frequency, interconnectivity as well as flexibility. So they are pricy due to limited resources and not easily funded due to limited budget and low profitability.