 Hey, thanks Lauren and thanks to the 168 of you who are joining today So today I want to follow up on Trey's discussion and kind of dive deeper and give you all They have an experience of how user experience has been applied in my research And then I will also apply the concept of user experience to the design of wayfinding elements And in particular, we're going to see how the Dutch have innovated in their wayfinding design And how wayfinding can then be applied in the North American context So let's start with a bit of a background, right? So Lauren has distributed this earlier. There's one video here and two papers That I've authored and this kind of will serve as a background for my talk So go ahead take a look at those papers and if you're if you're not really following along in this talk You can always go back and just rewatch the YouTube video Especially those of you who are joining us on the recording of this webinar. Okay So it's really good to have you here and today I'm going to extend on what Trey has already introduced to you about the hierarchy of needs and This hierarchy of needs kind of illustrates what What we are looking for as bicycle Infrastructure designers and I would argue also as urban planners, right? At the top you see awe and enjoyment and reliability and the bottom you see the basic requirements of safety and security So what I will argue in this talk is that as we move towards the top of the hierarchy as we get towards awe and a Good experience and something very pleasant and enjoyable. We have to move towards more qualitative methods We go from a science of design which provides basic functionality and security to an art of design and that's perhaps something that urban designers are very comfortable with and UX designers of as Trey has mentioned is also quite comfortable with but maybe something that could hinder the technical more technically minded of You you on this webinar today So let's let's see how these two connect and then how art and engineering can kind of work together With both research and practice to make bicycle infrastructure better so Here's the proposition that I want to make in transport planning. We have a severe problem of a to B ism Right and what does a to B is a mean? It means that we assume that the origin and destination matter more than the journey itself We assume that the journey has negative utility But that is kind of odd. Isn't it that the journey has negative utility? What if it is awe and enjoyment on the journey doesn't that mean the journey has positive utility? How does that get reflected in our transport models? Doesn't that kind of throw a wrench into what we've been discussing or the model of which we think transport works? So I want to discuss that a bit further about this idea in both research and practice and the first Item I want to bring to it. Your attention is the idea of preferences and motivation Okay, so you see highlighted in orange your preferences and motivation. What's different about these two concepts? I would argue that the difference is that preferences can be obtained from The actions of people for example, if you pick bike route a over bike route B You're revealing a preference, but motivation is not so easy to study We may know precisely what cyclists prefer in general by doing a large sample GPS study for example But why they do what they do is going to forever remain a black box And that is the human conundrum if we will we cannot mind read how other cyclists feel or how people pick their roots We just know the results, but how do we design for this? How do we design for motivation? And what can we use? Motivation and the idea of a black box to increase our understanding of bicycle infrastructure So Let me take a stab from a research perspective, right right now cycling research is Currently divided between revealed and stated preference, right reveal stated preference Revealed preference is something like a GPS study so a GPS study for example would take Your cell phone which is what everyone carries these days and and use an app on your cell phone to take like a thousand roots for example, and we see that out of these thousand 600 take root B 200 take root C and maybe a hundred takes root B, okay, so that doesn't quite add up to a thousand, but this is this is the left part of this chart, right? What about stated preferences up here on the right side? What what what is it here about stated preferences that makes it so difficult? So if you see at the top with the AB test we can ask people about the scenarios, right? so what they would do if they could which they aren't at the moment because they're answering a question on a piece of paper and and we're trying to figure out what is revealed preference good for and what kind of Things that stated preferences are good for and my review is that reveal preferences really Kind of reveals people's choices and preferences But as we move towards stated preference the real value in doing stated preference research Is actually in getting at people's motivation So in going beyond whether it's a to b because that's been covered by our GPS studies already and going more into Scenarios and asking people why they prefer what they prefer, right? If GPS study enroaches on the territory of revealed preference, then we should be actually taking stated preference to Answer our deep layer and more fundamental questions about why people cycle right and what makes for a good cycling experience So what do we already know from GPS studies? We can already kind of have a hunch and I'm going to use the researchers of Joseph brooch, then for Dale and the John Glebe here in their paper To kind of show you what GPS studies have already shown us and this was already done, you know before the widespread adoptions of Smartphones of December 2012, right? and and they state right Using a hundred and forty four one thousand four hundred forty nine non-exercise utilitarian trips. They've estimated a Root choice model, right and the findings suggest that cyclists are sensitive to the effects of distance turning frequency slope Right intersection control and traffic volumes in addition cyclists appear to place relatively high value on off-street Bike paths enhance neighborhood bikeway of the traffic common features and bridge facilities I would say that none of you on this call are very surprised at the results of these GPS studies And if you're a cyclist, they probably won't surprise you either, right? So if you have the experience of cycling and you know What bad infrastructure is it's not difficult to infer what good infrastructure is it's But perhaps what's more interesting to me as a field of research is the motivation, right? Is the motivation of why people prefer what they prefer and that's something that we'll get into in a moment So let's go back to our slides here. Okay So GPS I would argue that we're looking to innovate in the field of outside in Sorry inside out methodologies, right? So we can observe people in their natural environment on the move But we can also look inside out ask people what they prefer Um, and and how do we extract that information in a meaningful way, right? So people may say I like trees along my route. Okay. How do we transfer late? I like trees and greenery into the design of bicycle infrastructure after all, there's a variety of ways to arrange bikes Trees and and and flowers and and the bike path. So this is where we get into a bit more of a design challenge Right, it's not so easy to ask exactly the elements that people prefer Okay, so this is where it the idea bicycle highways got me interested right the european cycling Federation says that bicycle highways should be at least three miles long, uh, 10 feet of one Directional 13 feet of bi-directional Uh separated from you know motorized traffic and everything else listed here But these are really just necessary but not sufficient conditions for a great cycling experience It doesn't tell you how to odd people how to make cycling a great experience. It just tells you what the basics are So here's the basics again in in a diagram form, right? Basics I want to focus us though to the more Going beyond the basics the more qualitative and you know Ewing and handy Who does urban design research? They kind of call this like what what are the Undefinable features, right? What's what's the remainder? After we do the basics and I think The the answer to this I think the answer to this question comes in the users Right by studying people going from inside out. What is important for people who use bikes and as tray have said well, this is On the bottom right In terms of what are the user preferences of different groups, right? Okay, so how do we design bicycle highways? This is what I found interesting This is from European practitioners, but it might as well be in north america too. I mean I Uh, I I grew up in canada and I've made numerous visits to the u.s. Right, so We're probably a highway society. So we know how to build highways really well um But uh, what kind of logic are we employing is the logic that we use to build highways the same logic that we use to design an urban street And if that is so then we have to kind of figure out and decide In which logic do we want to build bicycle infrastructure? Do you want to build it according to social logic or traffic logic? Do we want to move from people from a to b? Or do we want to design for a good experience? Right, and it makes a key difference in how we conceptualize this Is it an art or is it mechanics? Right, is it a laminar flow applied to clover leafs or is it something else? So it's bicycle infrastructure like this But scaled down Right, we can build 50 60 feet highways. So is this scaled down or is it more like urban design? so And if you were to ask an architect, right, right? This is kind of the the sneak q and a is that might be coming up. It is what what does it take to build a beautiful building? um, I would argue that You know, if you look in the design literature, it's someone has said it's a tension between, you know, uniformity and And variation, right? That's something that's what creates great architecture, right? These These windows here are uniform, but they also have their variations on the theme You know and and that's very different from what this is, right? This is this is uniformity with no Not much attention paid to aesthetics Unless you look back into the 1930s into the the parkways movement, right when bicycles Sorry when highways were being built for recreational purposes So what is it more like now as I advance to the next slide for those of you who watch the youtube video already You'll know this next slide is as I ask you this what is of the of the previous two slides What is this more like? right and it's literally a bicycle highway, which um, if this is the utopia that we're designing for then I would argue this is a bit problematic because I personally Would not want to cycle here, right? And if we're designing bicycle highways like this would definitely use the a to b logic and this is thanks to the uh, bicycle highway that they are they were building in 2014 I believe it's now finished in the ryan region in, uh, germany. So they're by the ryan river so Let's look a bit into what I've just said applied Right, let's talk about wayfinding. So this is I want to kind of give you a practical Example of what I'm trying to talk about and yes, that's me Yeah So, uh, we went we did some studies, uh, a piece of research over the summer of 2014 with this question in mind Right, what makes users identify a cycle highway and what world is wayfinding play in e-bikes user? the user e-bike users cycle highway experience because as we know that this from the sales data that in fact users are now sorry e-bikes constitute the More sales than conventional bicycles. I believe that is in terms of dollars Not units, but still that's that means the bulk of new revenue is coming from the sale e-bikes So we should probably kind of figure out how these can These new vehicles can be integrated into our existing infrastructure, right? So this is the question and we set out to, uh, answer this question using qualitative methods, right? We'll come back to the findings in a bit But I want to give you, you know, give it away before before I have to sit through all this So here are the the main findings before I get started. We'll come back to them Okay, what did we do? Uh, we we we took a 11 mile Bicycle highway connecting these two cities in the Netherlands They're about 11 miles apart. We thought it was great because that's about The the maximum distance that people kind of are willing to travel by bike If you're a commuter, that's equal to about one hour on a e-bike And this was a bicycle highway that was being developed. So some parts of it are Up to standard and then as of the current day, I think the whole thing has now been signed. So and completed infrastructure wise We we did a qualitative interview. So on the go we did We interviewed people as they were riding 12 e-bike users, you know impairs And we also looked at the social aspects. So if they were cycling together How how they interact with each other were they were they able to talk along the way? For example, they talk into each other then distract them from, you know Wayfinding elements, etc, etc. So those were all kind of the things that we were curious about Right, uh, if you're curious about dutch bicycle Infrastructure wayfinding. This is the current standards The whole kind of the part the purpose of this research was also to develop new standards for You know, basically cyclists who are going faster So these these will be typical of what you'll see in the Netherlands And we took two case studies. So so one was uh, this thing at the top here, which is Some are this shapely kind of sign and then the second one is this You know more square kind of things we took half the route Uh was one concept and then the other half was the other concept We kind of we're also trying to figure out not only do you prefer the older the new one But also in between the two new ones, which one do you prefer? right and This kind of also forms its own branding strategy in a way, right so um, so One set is on the left another set is on the right and these would be used together right as as a whole And uh, basically we found that people overwhelmingly prefer the new signage. Um, we'll take a brief tour in a in just a second But in addition, they also preferred this one, you know the the one on the right the concept Now so the concept plus was more alike The old one and the concepts now was more like uh, it was more innovative. So I think people preferred the one on the right and you know So let's before we take you to the conclusions Um, I want to give you like a brief tour of kind of what we're talking about since You know, we're all stuck inside. We'd rather be outside. So let's see if we I can bring you along on a brief tour right here If you look on the right here, you see these little arrows that's on the bottom So these are like the three warning signs. Um before you make a left. So so Forward there's going to be a left turn And then these these three signs kind of warn you before it's going to happen And then as you move a bit more then you get to this warning sign, which if I play the video There it is on the right, right? You see that then that tells you which way to go So you have a series of preparations kind of like, uh, what you would see on on on a highway, right? You get some warning before you actually go to your exit Pause again up there All right, that's how small it was and how how much higher up it was So it's very not at eye level if you're cyclist Um, and it's not very easy to see so I find with the old sign that you really have to kind of stop to Really squint and see what's there, right? Um, as long as you have that the route finding correct as long as it's clear You know, uh, where you're supposed to go to get to your destination You know, you can have You're picking shoes of what kind of infrastructure you want, right? And this is a low traffic Traffic calm street, right in the countryside and then, you know, here's some paving forest And then you get into more of the urban areas Right with trees and stuff and you can see very few cars. There's no cars at all right in in this whole um This whole journey yet um, and then you transition back to Uh, dedicated bicycle infrastructure, so it's very seamless Along the journey, but it's it's typically the way finding and the transitions that make the whole thing kind of work Right and now you're on a colored edge lane road Um, and then you know as we get close to the city the end of this journey and then I'll wrap this up So a green line and then we get kind of to a bridge and then this is much more urban you can see um So, uh, what are some takeaways from this and then I'll hand it back to lauren for q and a Some some takeaways, you know design matters, right design matters Signs alone as you can see the infrastructure kind of it is there, but it's not coherent I would argue signs alone go a long way uh, education is key, right and Clear cycling infrastructure, you know improved cyclists level of relaxation So that's something interesting, right not something revealed in gps But it's something that you can get quite accurately if you ask people along the way how they feel at each point So, uh, let's wrap this up by returning to this pyramid, right? So we have the maslow hierarchy of needs, uh, Right, uh, where we started with and then alfonso adapted this to walking needs. Um, kind of conceptualize this as limits, right on the bottom versus uh versus urban form on the top, right? And then I kind of was playing with this idea that you get from like quantitative limits to qualitative Enablers, right? So you kind of if if something is You know 50 kilometers away. It's hard to make the argument that you'll cycle there Um, if if the bike path is like 50% longer than you know the similar driving route It's hard to convince people to ride there if it's not safe, right then, uh, it's only the The fearless will go And as you move up the pyramid, it becomes harder to deal with right like for example, what if we're trying to design something pleasurable How how do we calculate for that? Right, and then here is overlaid onto, uh, the bicycle user experience scheme Going from I think almost the kind of the same idea right from basic needs over to to qualitative indicators and qualitative ways of talking about bicycle experience So, uh going back to your original question, right, which was the original statement was asking about How you feel about cycling I wanted to bring back up the mentee which is uh, what you answered in the beginning And as you can see right you answered safety comfort connectivity all ages separation You'll access Some of these actually the the big points that you've mentioned, you know safety is a funny one We try and quantify it, but really In terms of human psychology, it's really much more about uh, how safe people feel right like airplanes are relatively safe But it's it's the stuff of nightmares, right? So and I think you know cycling can be definitely made Quantitatively safer, but it's you know much more difficult to measure that the near misses that cause people to to fear the the environment that they're in So I'll uh, I'll wrap up and leave you something to think about while we go to q&a with Lauren Thanks for your time and talk to you in a bit