11/02/19 - IDEATE and aspects we will continue working on

We already come to the last workshop of the English course and thus to the last blog post that I will write on the topic of “Mobility in rural areas” for the moment. Today’s session was the ideate phase. In the ideate phase, many different concepts should be developed which lead to a step-by-step increase of creativity. Tools can be a task-based brainstorming or SCAMPER (substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to other uses, eliminate, rearrange) and the development of best and worst ideas. There are very simple rules with respect to the this phase: creative confidence, quantity before quality and no criticism of ideas
à anything goes!

Keeping this in mind, our ideate phase was set up as a meeting in the aula of the university where the groups first had to present their results. The audience consisted of the different groups, our lecturer, the head of our line of study and another lecturer which will guide the Integrationseminar in the 6^th semester. Last but not least we also had two guests from the city of Langenau, Mr. Klaiber and Ms Imdahl (both from “Initiative Zukunftsmobilität”), who in turn also gave an insight into the main points of the mobility concept, which they worked out in several workshops with the citizens of Langenau. The next point on the agenda was initially to apply the ideate tools (brainstorming and wildest ideas competition) which had to be cancelled, because we didn’t have enough time left. Nevertheless, we did get together in new groups for the Integrationsseminar in the end and each group came up with an aspect of the broad topic “Mobility in rural regions” to investigate in further. For the topics, the problem, a research question and the goal had to be defined and submitted to the lecturers.

From the presentation about the mobility concept we learned that there will be six e-cars available for car-sharing in Langenau and its surrounding villages. In contrast to that, from our survey results we know that the majority of people is not practicing car-sharing. This lead my group to the question how the acceptance of car-sharing can be increased, so that the e-cars are really going to be used by the citizens? We then talked to the two guests and together we found a topic for our Integrationsseminar which will now be the “Examination of the car-sharing acceptance on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis”. Going forward, the focus of our project work within the topic “Mobility in rural areas” will be to analyze what it takes for car-sharing to be used and accepted by the citizens of Langenau. At first, we will develop a use profile which should include aspects like when do I need a second car in rural regions?/how often and which distances do I drive the car?/for what purpose?/How many hours per day?. Additionally, we would like to identify the willingness of the citizens, to go for other solutions than using a second car. Regarding this question, we might apply cascading scenarios (e.g. what are the priorities of the users and what transportation mode is most suitable for them or rather on which transportation mode do they fall back in case their preferred transportation solution is not available?):  

1.      Second car (always available, comfortable)

2.      Car-sharing

3.      Bus

4.      Bike

5.      Taxi (most expensive)

We will then weigh the costs (what is the total cost of ownership of a second car vs. car-sharing) and the benefits (advantages and disadvantages of car-sharing).

The end goal of the examination is to derive from the analysis for which users car-sharing makes sense and is feasible, under which conditions and which are the criteria for users, so that they change to car-sharing? What needs to be guaranteed?

The deadline for the project is the 9^th of September 2019. Finally, all groups will present their results, perhaps also as part of a publicly held event in the city of Langenau, because both of the guests have already raised their interest in the results of our research for the Integrationsseminar. This is especially true for our topic, because it is already decided that the e-cars will be provided, but neither a cost-benefit analysis, nor a concept for raising the acceptance from the citizens perspective have been elaborated before.