In this article we describe our research activities in week 4.
This week was all about brainstorming on the sustainable future of Texel. In order to design the sustainable mobility future of Texel we have decided to first discuss this solution on the socio-technical regimes level, and later try to zoom in on some technology niches. The first part will be a more ambiguous or intangible approach to the possible solution, while the second provides some tangible ideas on what the future might actually look like. The view from the future socio-technical landscape, what effects the transition might have on the day-to-day life, will be discussed in a later stage.
The method of brainstorming we chose was mindmapping. This method is very powerful because it allows the user to think freely, but at the mean time creates a structure with ‘branches’ for main topics, and ‘twigs’ for lesser topics. This will be useful when the results of the mindmap need to be processed into a report later on. Mind mapping also allows the brainstormers to speak freely without being limited by internal judgement. Therefore every connection is written down and this can create some very interesting ideas. In a mind map ideas from different branches can also be combined to create new ideas.
We used the outline for this part of the report, as provided on being here, for the first brainstorming session. We linked sustainable mobility to four initial branches in the mind map: prevailing technologies, the actors involved, culture and behaviour and economy. We decided to leave rules and regulations out of this brainstorm session for now because we didn’t want to be limited by rules and regulations upfront. Those restrictions can be applied later by valuing and selecting the outcomes of the brainstorm session. This picture shows the results of the first session, these results will be further discussed in the report.
Figure 1: the first mind map containing solutions on the regimes level.
While keeping the outcome of the first session in our mind, the second session was aimed at generating some tangible examples. This session was very fun because we came up with some bizarre ideas, that later turned out to have a sense of usability. For instance the idea of creating a cableway generated the idea of creating a mobility system that would show tourists all the sustainable developments on the island in some sort of ride, like in a theme park. After the whiteboard was filled with ideas, we started grouping them. Four groups were created: personal mobility, infrastructural changes, mobility of goods (from the store to the consumer) and public ways of transport. The last category was not just named ‘public transport’, because we also wanted to explore a new possibilities in shared transport modes. The picture below shows the outcome of the second brainstorm session.
Figure 2: the second mind map containing solutions on the technological niche level.
Unfortunately, we also encountered a setback this week. One of our group members could no longer combine the course with her other work and therefore was forced to step out of the course. Since we are now a party of three, we might need to overthink our planning and approach. In the meantime we all understand Nikki’s decision and wish her the best of luck with her graduation.
