Last week our co-founder David was interviewed about his transport life for the Mobility Stories podcast.
(Disclosure – Mobility Stories is my personal podcast where I speak to real people about their travel and mobility. I am also a co-founder of Fuse Mobility alongside David. I thought it would be fun to get close and transport-personal with David in my podcast. And it was!)
It’s now another week. I am listening with my Fuse Mobility hat on and thinking about MaaS, and integrated transport.
With that hat on I am thinking “So what?” What have I learnt? For MaaS and for Fuse Mobility?
“So what” for MaaS?
MaaS had been going through a difficult patch. Is it terminal? A recalibration? (Keep an eye out for a blog post coming soon for our views on this.) What light has my chat with David thrown on this Moment in MaaS?
David is into tech. He is a more than competent technology and app user. He self-diagnoses himself as a rational decision maker. BUT …I have two important buts:
Language: he uses google maps/navigate a LOT. But he uses it to “sift”. He uses apps to “explore” travel destinations and opportunities. He adapts them to his and his family’s lives.
Experience: he readily talks about his travel experiences: what the journey has given him and Anna (his wife) and of course Robbie (his 18 month old son). What happened. How they felt. They’re the good bits.
We have been around MaaS since its inception. In our work we have talked to hundreds of people. (In my own transport work over the last 30 years I must have asked questions of, and listened to, thousands of people about their lives and travel.)
Surprise: it has never been just about an app.
Surprise: “plan-book-pay” has been the lexicon and therefore the dream of the sector, not necessarily the user.
I am proud that the approaches to MaaS that we have designed and trialed have been built on listening and collaboration; focussing on segments - eg young people, people giving up the car as they age -; and destinations - eg one platform to drive multiple interfaces for partners. An app has been just a part of this Mobility as a SERVICE.
Of course the apps have their place – an important place in certain contexts. BUT (a third but) the tech-centric plan-book-pay thinking is too far removed from experience to get people’s attention (there’s a word), their use and interest. And if it does none of these things: what’s the point? Really? Even for rational David.
“So what” for Fuse Mobility?
At Fuse Mobiity we design methods to get people talking about what is really important to them in their lives and then, and ONLY THEN, on how the transport and technology fits in. We certainly never start with “an app is the answer”. With this approach we can use our transport knowledge to collaboratively design a service- of which tech and an app can be a core part – to, well, do all the words that the users’ language has started to beg. Using a new language with a focus on experience makes us think differently about transport policy and technology.
Talking to David – and others in my Mobility Stories podcast – has reinforced the importance of this approach. Get people talking and listen. Speaking of which, have a listen to here Marco te Brömmelstroet’s great presentation Rethinking the Mobility paradigm (especially from 22m22s): using a new language and lexicon gives new thinking and new approaches.
It’s about techniques to unlock this thinking. I am pleased that is what we do at Fuse Mobility.
And a final “so what for Fuse Mobility?”: talking to David has made me happy. David is authentic. He uses public transport, he thinks about transport choices and understands travel experience. Many in the sector don’t use public transport, don’t experience it, even if it is available and they are able to do so. Ok – you don’t have to be a bus spotter – in fact it helps if you’re not – but really?
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