Bringing behavioural insight + service design expertise:
Making sustainable public transport the obvious choice for the commute, with a digital subscription + journey planner that adapts to customers’ needs
“Cities are congested, growth is constrained, quality of life damaged. 'Mobility As A Service' uses digital tools to integrate journey planning and ticketing across transport services - helping to nudge people out of car commutes. So how can a global engineering consultancy team turn 'MaaS' into a proven customer and business model, to grow new revenue streams? How might we shift commutes to low carbon public transport, with a transport subscription as easy as getting in the car on your drive?”
Rich took early Mobility As A Service experiments and brought together the global engineering consultancy client, Atkins, and a research and design team, to imagine a transport future for Greater Manchester - where digital subscriptions could mirror the simple integration of transport systems in cities like London or Singapore.
In many cities, transport remains fragmented across different transport modes and service providers, making it seem a complicated, slow or expensive choice vs the car that’s already been paid for (or at least feels like it’s been paid for!).
If you don’t have time or resource to build fully integrated physical transport interchanges, how might a digital subscription bundle services together, so that it feels like one, simple system? How would it adapt to customer needs? And do people always want the quickest route, or is there more to it than that?
We designed a project that would introduce research that got closer to passenger needs - ‘ride-a-longs’, where researchers followed commuters across the city and identified needs beyond tickets and journey planning.
The ex army guy who took 5 buses across the city at 5am, and wanted a transport system that would re-route him if things go wrong, so he still got to work on time.
The mum who wanted to be confident that if she left her car at home, and her child got sick at school, that a transport subscription would get her there quickly and reliably (would the subscription include Uber taxis, for example?).
The digital designer who was less bothered about the speed of the journey, but more interested in a consistent wifi signal, so that they could answer emails on the way to work.
Or the retired passenger with a disability, who wanted to know if the transport planner app would allow her to choose an accessible route - and one that would keep her dry all the way!
Rich led the direction of a single prototype transport brand for Greater Manchester, covering ticketing, route planning and multiple transport modes and service providers - making it an easier choice for city residents to use sustainable public transport, and at lower cost than older ticketing tech and physical interchange infrastructure.
Coaching research, creative and service design colleagues, and partnering with local authorities, we designed experiences that worked for different types of transport customers - creating a model that consultants could replicate with their city authority clients across the world, and open up new revenue streams beyond their major physical infrastructure delivery.
The vision was shared with Transport for Greater Manchester leadership and the Mayor of Greater Manchester - outlining how the system might nudge journeys away from private cars, and towards public transport, with potential congestion and air quality improvement - that would attract new employees and businesses to the city and region.
The prototype yellow transport brand and experience design is similar to the Bee Network later introduced to Greater Manchester, which is still expanding today.
ethnographic research
sustainable transport
brand + experience design
product + service design