Carolyn Wegner
 

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Ebbe

A Tangible - Digital Service Bringing Independence to Children and Families

 

Ebbe is a travel companion for 7-9 year olds that helps children to navigate independently. With Ebbe, children can plan their journey, learn about their environment, and explore alone, or with friends.

 

Information

Umea Institute of Design

Duration: 10 Weeks

Project Location: Umea, Sweden

Service Design & Design Research

Team: Minh-Huy Dang, Iris Ritsma

Partners: Umea Kommune, Ultra, Research Institute of Sweden

 

Recognition

Participatory Design Conference; 2018, Belgium

IXDA Finalist; 2019, Seattle WA, USA

 
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Background

Human-made mobility, such as public transportation, is not neutral. Transportation is designed, meaning it carries implicit biases, which favors some, and puts others at a disadvantage. Around the world, women’s mobility trends and habits typically exist outside of the “norm” within which transportation is designed.

 

Our Inquiry 

By researching mobility within Umea, how might we approach mobility design with a norm critical solution? What does it mean to question the underlying power structures and gender dynamics within the visible and invisible urban infrastructure?

 

The Key

Critical to the design of Umea's the future mobility and urban climate is understanding  the  power structures across gender, social, political, and cultural norms

 
 

Primary Insights

 
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Complex Schedules

Children often have complicated schedules, and this can create stress on parents, as they try to maintain their own routines as well

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Trip Chaining

Often, the responsibility of maintaining the child’s schedule falls on one parent, and creates additional work

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Lacking Public Transportation

Public transportation routes does not cater to family needs, and requires levels of independence and responsibility (cell phone, credit card)

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Gaps Towards Independence

The road towards a child’s independence can be hard to navigate for both the parent and child, and current offerings that provide security and guidance don’t match families nuanced transition needs

 
 

How might we help children transition towards greater mobility independence, while addressing parental gender roles in relation to this complexity?

 
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Ebbe’s System

Tangible + Digital

 

Ebbe consists of a physical device that is fed by a digital app. The app is synched to the user’s network, local transportation schedule, personal calendar, and navigation app of choice. The child and parent plans together

 
 

1. Parent and child together use Ebbe’s app to plan the child’s mobility schedule

2. Ebbe is synched to schedule

3. Ebbe is used by child in daily routines

 
 
 
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Ebbe: Physical

Features

 
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Directional guidance through haptic and weighted feedback

 
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Parental Communication through light and haptic feedback

 
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Directional Guidance Through Abstracted visualization

 
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Visualization of Friend Network in Relation to User

 
 
 

Ebbe: Digital

Conceptual Features & Flow

 
 
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Friend & Guardian Network

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Journey Tracker

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Comm. Center

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Journey Planner

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Active & Past Journey Log

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Security Settings

 
 
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Participatory Process

 

Research

In-Field Research & Observation

 

We entered into the public space of Umea to observe mobility trends, and approach people on the street and in their place of work to inquire about transport practices. This established preliminary relationships with a broad range of residents. From these relationships formed, we were also referred to others for interviewing and observation. 

 
 
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Collection & Mapping of Material

 

After several rounds of ethnographic research, and observational research, we collected our subjects' stories, piecing them together in way that would be most useful for extraction of information and common themes. 

 
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Thick Descriptions

 
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Synthesis 

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Sense making: Themes

 
 

1.

Gender, Age, and Ethnicity Discrimination

 

2.

Complexity in Family Travel Patterns

 

3.

Independence Transition

 
 
 

What was our focus?

After preliminary interviews and observations, three themes were identified, and brief was created based on a combination of two themes: Complexity in Family Travel, and Child Mobility Independence Transition.

 
 
 

This brief addresses the mobility ecosystem of the family unit. In particular, we were interested in family travel patterns as children transition towards more independence, and gender roles in relation to this complexity.


 

Workshops & Probes

 

Municipality Workshop

 

Once our preliminary brief was formulated with several related topics to address, a workshop was held  with the Umea Kommun and Ultra Bus Company. The goal was to engage them with our research material and brief. 

 
 
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Role Play Cards for Participants: Each assigned a family member to enact in given scenarios

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Probes

 

Loki was a small bot created to gauge community willingness to unify to provide help and support to something in need.

 
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More Process coming soon. Ask if you’d like to hear more in the meantime :)