Family trip
By: Maria Carvalho Barreira
Tags: Mobility, User Research, Transportation, UX, User Experience

Besides this tool, we prepared a day in the life for parents and teens to fill with their usual daily family schedule concerning mobility. There was also a different version for the kindergarten teachers, focused on the morning and afternoon periods where the adults (parents, grandparents, …) accompany the children to and from school.

The tool for parents/older children helped us understand how their families managed time and methods of transportation taking into account their daily life and the emotions they feel when it comes to their mobility

User profiles

After gathering the information from all of our interviews and focus group, we grouped everything in user profiles.

We did user profiles for each participant, where we gathered photos, family background, a photo of the filled tool and main quotes and insights

Insights

Then it was time to start filtering everything we already had, and we started by writing the main insights from our research.

Insight 1

Planning tasks and activities and strict time management is essential in the life of families with children to facilitate the organisation of various everyday activities.

👩 “I wish I had something that could link mobility to a family agenda.”

👩‍🏫 “I wish there was something I could associate with the weather and traffic indications.”

Insight 2

Mobility is conditioned by schedules and financial availability so that families can respond better to their routine and organisation.

👩 “With children, it’s impossible to travel normally, you can’t stick to schedules.”

👱‍♀️ “My father works out of town and has a shifting schedule.”

Insight 3

Travel time between daily activities is seen as an opportunity to do other things so that all the extra time in the routines is productive.

👨 “I usually spend my time in transportation watching news and playing games.”

👨 “Whenever we make big trips as a family, everyone falls asleep in the car but me.”

Insight 4

The mobile phone is essential in everyday life for parents to manage mobility and entertain their children.

👩‍🏫 “Parents come to school with cell phones to entertain themselves and their children.”

👩‍🏫 “Children start using mobile phones from the age of 7, to communicate with the parents.”

Insight 5

Despite the traffic and the difficulty of parking in Lisbon, the car is one of the most used means of transport for family travel due to the comfort, accessibility and facility of schedules.

👱‍♂️ “As a family we all drive because it’s more comfortable.”

👱‍♂ “I have trouble with traffic and bringing my stuff and supplies to college when taking public transportation.”

Insight 6

It is preferable to share personal transport with friends and family so that there is more confidence on the part of everyone.

👱‍♂ “My brothers go to practice with my dad or take a ride with his friends’ parents.”

👱‍♀ “I wish I could organize rides with trusted neighbours and friends.”

HMW

After gathering all these insights and quotes from our participants, it was time to define some How Might We’s that helped us guide our project. It was challenging to summarise all of the information we had collected before and turning it into 3 questions that would lead to our solutions.

How might we speed up the planning of daily tasks and journeys of families with children, gathering and reducing the resources they use?

of families with children, gathering and reducing the resources they use? How might we promote the sharing of private transport in the city of Lisbon, so that safety and trust are a priority in the travel of the whole family?

in the city of Lisbon, so that safety and trust are a priority in the travel of the whole family? How might we optimize the time spent in the various phases of travel, making the experience more enjoyable for families in their own transportation?

Brainstorming

When we closed our HMWs, we had a brainstorming session with another two groups from our class. In this session each group presented the project briefly, and with an HMW as a starting point, sketched some quick and simple ideias for possible solutions. After doing this for all the HMWs of the 3 groups, we collected every piece of sketched paper and voted on them with small green stickers.

This session was really helpful to brainstorm ideas and to have fresh feedback from other people apart from the group that was working on it specifically.