How to help promote respectful spaces for pedestrians: Urban planning, civility, and accessibility.
And improve its UX through the double diamond of Design Thinking (1/2).
Have you ever used an electric scooter or bicycle to commute to work? Have you ever stumbled upon a broken tile? Have you had to change your route because of a tree in the middle of the sidewalk?
Perhaps you haven’t paid attention to these details, as unconsciously we have accepted the large number of poorly parked electric scooters or bicycles, you’ve stumbled but continued on your way, and even thought it’s not a big deal. But… have you ever stopped to think about how all these daily factors affect someone with mobility issues?
This is what my team and I have set out to understand and address: the limited awareness of social barriers and even a lack of understanding towards people with mobility issues.
And… what’s this double diamond thing? 😶
It’s the Design Thinking method we’ve used for this challenge. Right now, you’re in the first part:
Diamond 1: Research and Analysis Phase (First part)
Diamond 2: Idea Generation and Implementation Phase (Second part)
We’ve organized this entire process using a Gantt chart to distribute tasks and avoid lingering in each phase longer than necessary.
Let’s go with the first diamond! 🔶
Research 🔍
First of all, after studying the brief and individually researching, we formulated ‘Research Questions’ through the collaborative tool Figjam, categorizing them into three categories: User, Competition, and Product/Service.
Thanks to this technique, we generated numerous questions related to the user’s experience regarding the obstacles on our sidewalks, how they cope with them, and what their thoughts are. As for the competition, we posed questions about how other cities or countries manage this issue, both internationally and within our city. Regarding public entities, we proposed questions related to our city council, as this problem directly falls under their jurisdiction — how they manage it, whether their procedures are appropriate, if there are alternative solutions, etc.
To answer these questions, we decided to employ a wide range of research techniques. That’s why there are color-coded points corresponding to each of these techniques. The ones we’ve used include desk research, questionnaires, interviews, and site visits (safari).
Desk Research 👩🏻💻
During this stage, we’ve spent 2 days because it’s quite an extensive topic, although we’ve focused on investigating what was posed in the research questions. When we came back together to discuss, we came across various issues — protests, social unrest, limited inclusion of people with disabilities, accidents… We encountered a sad reality:
Cities, businesses, and people often boast about accessibility, but there is no such accessibility. Moreover, being a ‘minority’ of the population, it is even less taken into account, and many times it coincides that a person becomes much more aware of the problem when they have and experience that problem firsthand, either through someone close to them or by experiencing it themselves.
After this desk research, we have collectively concluded to continue our line of work on this specific topic: accessibility for all types of users, with or without mobility issues, related to the obstacles that can be found on the streets, how they affect them, how other cities manage them, etc.
Questionnaire 📊
This initial phase of engagement (kick-off) served us to design our questionnaire. To do this, we launched it through Google Forms to gather quantitative information about the accessibility issue on the streets. Most of the questions we’ve posed are derived from the research questions we’ve seen above, and a few additional ones that we thought would be appropriate. The responses that have caught our attention the most are as follows:
The questionnaire helped reinforce our initial idea regarding whether there is an issue with accessibility on our streets. We also came across more ideas.
There isn’t much difference in living in the city center versus the outskirts or other areas in terms of street obstacles.
There is a significant number of obstacles, not only related to sidewalks but also concerning city lighting, cleanliness, uneven terrain, and even slippery pavement in adverse weather conditions.
There isn’t a specific established service to report these obstacles; instead, most people directly contact the city’s municipal authorities.
There seems to be a widespread acceptance that streets are not repaired despite demands, accidents, or even protests.
Interviews 🗣
While we were collecting questionnaire responses, each of us prepared individual interviews. In total, we conducted 8 interviews with users who have different mobility issues to understand and empathize with what’s happening on our streets, cross-reference information, and gather all possible insights to create our user personas.
What profiles have we interviewed, with 5 people in the group?
- Two people who use baby strollers
- A person in a wheelchair
- Two elderly individuals without mobility issues
- A moderately mobile user without mobility issues
- A blind person
- A person with a leg disability
As you can see above, all users either have or do not have mobility issues. We wanted to see what differences we could find among these users, and we came across the following verbatims:
These problems make you feel like you have to depend on everything and everyone.
Everything is designed for people without mobility issues.
You don’t see the problems until you have them. You only notice things related to your own problem.
People with mobility issues do not lead the lives they would like. And I’m not talking about luxuries, but just going to a place and feeling comfortable.
You have to investigate two things: whether I can reach a place and, if I get there, whether I can enter. I shouldn’t have to go in circles to reach a place.
Since people with mobility issues are not the majority of the population, no changes are made.
I had no idea about accessibility issues until I had a problem.
To categorize the information obtained from the interviews further, we displayed it on an affinity map:
Safari 🕵🏻
As for the last research technique we’ve used, since there are 5 of us, each of us conducted a ‘safari’ in our neighborhoods or most frequented areas. Having this many people gave us the great advantage of living in both the city center, outskirts, and in another city. We encountered obstacles of all kinds. Here are some examples:
It has been quite helpful because we’ve seen that if we look closely, there are obstacles everywhere of all kinds, whether it’s on a main street, a secondary one, or in one city or another.
At this point, even though it seemed clear, we got even more lost… because on one hand, there are too many diverse obstacles, and on the other, it doesn’t affect users in the same way, although it affects everyone. Therefore, it was difficult to come up with just one idea that could solve everything.
At this moment, after empathizing with the users, it’s when we felt ready to define our user personas. We created Pilar and Juan, each with their empathy map and journey map. Why them and not others? Based on all the research, we thought that one user persona was insufficient, and even two seemed a bit limited considering all the problems we found. Nevertheless, we were able to encompass them:
Pilar is a lady with a disability who has to use a wheelchair to get around the city. She lives alone and often prefers to stay at home due to the insecurity she feels about the sidewalk:
In her empathy map, we found that she feels unprotected when going out due to physical obstacles like sidewalks without ramps, scooters strewn on the ground, etc., which makes her reconsider whether she will leave her house or not:
Pilar’s user journey is based on her routine from leaving home to going to the pharmacy. Among her steps, we find that it causes her more discomfort than relief to have to get there:
Juan is a blind person who leads an active life because of his sports hobbies. Therefore, he encounters more obstacles than usual, such as people who are on their phones and don’t see him, trash bins in the middle of sidewalks, or excessive noise pollution when trying to cross the street. He detects a lack of awareness in society regarding blind individuals:
In Juan’s empathy map, we can see that, like Pilar, he feels insecure when going out on the street, which makes him more dependent than he should be:
In his user journey, we chose the same route as Pilar’s to see if there were any differences, and we found that there aren’t as many differences, but he has a much worse experience due to his blindness:
With all this initial research and analysis work, many more guidelines for addressing and defining the problem were presented to us, and I conclude with the insights we have obtained 🙌🏻:
There is a clearly poor arrangement of urban elements such as trees, trash bins, street lamps, signs, etc., and a significant number of problems with sidewalks, whether they are narrow, have cracks, raised tiles, and are in poor overall condition. Above all, there is a widespread sense of insecurity among users due to all these issues.
Users with disabilities have a strong negative feeling of being marginalized by society due to society’s lack of awareness.
Cities in general are often ill-prepared for easy accessibility to various locations.
If you want to know the idea we’ve come up with and how we’ve studied its implementation, you can find the second part in the following link!👇🏻
Diamond 2: Idea Generation and Implementation Phase (Second part).
