Female Mobility — a Summary
Opportunities for innovation
This is the summary. The full article describes many ideas in detail, read it here.
Authors: Frieda Bellmann, Diana Polack, Lieke Ypma
Transportation development has long been driven by technical descriptions, often car-centric and male-dominated. In this article, we describe a female perspective on mobility. The female perspective trains our empathy for diverse user motivations and alternative transportation, hence it inspires innovation. Combining data points with best practice and qualitative user insights, several opportunity areas are identified. The qualitative user insights were generated with a group of 40 female mobility professionals.
Literature shows females have different patterns, needs and behaviors, which were partly confirmed in our workshop on following use cases: traveling alone at night, combining family care with a paid job, including dog mobility in daily life, and moving between business meetings downtown. It becomes clear that being on the road means: keeping timelines, optimizing time by organizing work and social life, feeling safe and being safe, being nice to each other, while always moving in style.
Our female perspective on mobility inspires four areas of opportunity relevant to all mobility enterprises:
I. Change the concept from single-trip to trip-chain.
If trip-chaining is the standard, we can improve offerings towards more efficiency in planning and executing multi-stop routes.
II. Nurture our etiquette in a redistributed space.
In our shared street space, we need to constantly evolve our etiquette. Let’s take ownership of these.
III. Focus on pedestrians.
If we celebrate pedestrians, we relieve strain on the transportation system and raise the quality of city living.
IV. Build communities.
If we bring people together and let users help users, we empower people to more quickly accept new mobility solutions.
The female perspective inspires a recommendation regarding the way we work:
Develop transportation in a participative manner.
If we face our users’ challenges daily, catering solutions efficiently to their needs becomes second nature.
Described perspectives are not exclusive to women, but can enhance our view on diversity and modalities in the mobility field, and hence lead to solutions that improve life.
This is the summary. The full article describes many ideas in detail, read it here.
About the Authors:
Frieda Bellmann is a service design specialist in the field of mobility and is passionate about the study of human behavior in context.
Diana Polack works in city planning at the city of Berlin, in her free time she studies new methods of design and historical city plans.
Lieke Ypma works as a UX strategist in mobility and teaches advanced design methods.
Workshop and keynote by: Frieda Bellmann, Diana Polack, Lieke Ypma
Additional moderators: Johanna Auferkamp, Ingo Kucz, Katharina Seeger, Lisa Uckrow
Photographer: Sophie Bellmann
Editor: Ian Clover
Thanks to Timm Kekeritz for supporting us!
