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Future mobility for and by the people

Thursday, December 19, 2019

One of the projects that recently concluded its work is AHA – A Human Approach. This human-centered project has worked with an open mind-set while gathering cities and authorities, industry and of course the people, enabling them to develop a method to create a common agenda. It is true public engagement and an important tool for society planning and industry. And it also lies the foundation for the newly started AHA II.

A challenge for cities, industry and others developing our society, services and products is to create something that the public feels a need for. All actors tend to have different agendas, which is something that AHA wanted to dive deeper into.

The partners within AHA, Halmstad University, Volvo Cars, the City of Gothenburg and the City of Helsingborg, met up with the residents of the cities and arranged meetings and workshops trying to connect the agendas, set a human-centered approach and promote co-creation. Together they worked on finding areas they all agreed on needed improvement.

A few examples include work on Maas services, mobility hubs and society planning. In the latter one they agreed on seven principles that should be included when the cities move forward with developments. Another workshop built a case on a single mother and her children, their dreams and everyday life. In an interactive workshop they pinpointed what the city needed to provide and what services and products the family needed to make things work without owning a car.

The result is a model for co-creation, that they will now develop in AHA II. The plan is to place ”probes” in a few areas of Gothenburg and Helsingborg and create living labs, where the residents are invited to participate and contribute. A few things that will be included are different kinds of ride sharing, on-demand transportation, first and last mile services and a ”charging oasis”. The work will be carried out in a way that lets the project really get to know the residents, which will have all kinds of backgrounds and living-situations.  

”The word ’living’ is key. We establish ourselves in the different neighborhoods instead of inviting everyone to a lab. And the we will engage the residents and can carry on from there”, says Vaike Fors of Halmstad University, project manager for AHA and thematic leader for Public Engagement, and continues:

”What is exciting is that the residents’ engagement guides us on what to develop”.

Suzanne Andersson, thematic leader for Society Planning, agrees on the importance of AHA:

”This could win a lot of time for everyone developing services and societies. We have a working method for co-creation where we base our work on the users”.

Read AHA’s final report here
And read more at AHA’s webpage here and at Halmstad University here