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
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
Complex Schedules
Children often have complicated schedules, and this can create stress on parents, as they try to maintain their own routines as well
Trip Chaining
Often, the responsibility of maintaining the child’s schedule falls on one parent, and creates additional work
Lacking Public Transportation
Public transportation routes does not cater to family needs, and requires levels of independence and responsibility (cell phone, credit card)
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?
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
Ebbe: Physical
Features
Directional guidance through haptic and weighted feedback
Parental Communication through light and haptic feedback
Directional Guidance Through Abstracted visualization
Visualization of Friend Network in Relation to User
Ebbe: Digital
Conceptual Features & Flow
Friend & Guardian Network
Journey Tracker
Comm. Center
Journey Planner
Active & Past Journey Log
Security Settings
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.
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.
Thick Descriptions
Synthesis
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.
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.
