Involving the end user in the development of smart mobility is a design dilemma that developers seem to avoid. As a result, little is learnt about which governance arrangements may accommodate users in the development process.
Key words: user involvement, governance arrangements, learning, market-distortion, design dilemma
‘The main problem of realizing this paradigm change is not providing the service. That is simple. The main challenge is to get people want it,’ states Sampo Hietanen, director of MAAS in Helsinki. ‘Key is to look at it from a customer perspective.’ In his view, if innovative projects in this field are not directly funded by the customer, they are doomed to fail. In support of this view, we can indeed name a range of EU-funded projects that seem to have ended as soon as their funding stopped (e.g. Superhub, etc.).
This warning can be put into perspective, though, as innovation and learning doesn’t necessarily stop when projects stop. Innovation by nature comes with many trials and many errors. Failed projects inspire new projects. Innovation seldom unfolds as a straightforward success story but typically evolves serendipitous with unexpected gains. The current MAAS-initiative has also profited more and less directly from different EU-funded projects in the past (e.g. Mobinet, European MaaS Alliance). Public funds, of course, do not exclude user involvement. User involvement should not be seen as a guarantee for success. It may even slow down, fragmentize or commercialize developments in a negative way. This well-known, market-disturbing tension between user involvement and public funding pinpoints a key governance challenge: how and when to seriously involve the user in these developments of data platforms?
In the cases of VSS in Stuttgart, Superhub, Public Transport Victoria, Plan a Journey and PETRA, users were generally not involved, at least not at the time of study (April 2016), not as funders, not as stakeholders, not as experts and in many cases not even as testers. Tracking the behaviour of users was part of many platforms. This can be seen as a passive way of user involvement. In some cases, users were at least encouraged to provide feedback to the new services, often without much response. In some cases, user involvement was expected to develop soon at the time of study.
The case of CarFreeAtoZ is somewhat more advanced, as users can create accounts to customize some of the platform services. There are plans to improve the user profile functionalities further. The MAAS-initiative is even more of an exception. Users are the intended funders in the role of customers of the new service. This case is under development.
Concluding, we have encountered projects that involve users in these innovations. But in most cases, user involvement appears extremely limited. The role of users often remains abstract, in the best case ‘expected soon’. But for now, their involvement during the innovative development remains under-articulated and not formalized.
A few possible explanations deserve mentioning. The ‘doomed to fail’ explanation by Sampo Hietanen is one. Perhaps the public funds dominating most cases do practically exclude active involvement of users, because the public money available may mitigate the incentives to actually involve the user. Another, perhaps more hopeful, explanation is that user involvement is under development, appeared more complex than expected, and may further evolve as these platforms mature. A source of complexity is the variety of users. There are tourists and commuters, but also public services such as police and ambulance. Their travel behaviour and information needs vary a lot. How to organize for a proper representation of users?
Is the absence of user involvement alarming? Is it a ticket to failure? This of course depends on the goals of the project. If the goal is experimenting with the application of new technology – such as in the Superhub project – user involvement may not be vital. However, if any learning goal with regard to real experience applies, then users are hard to neglect. Little can be said on the basis of real experience. Perhaps more problematic is the lack of answers to questions on a meta-level. How to tackle user involvement as a governance challenge as well as how to efficiently organize user involvement as an enrichment of the innovative process? Answers to those questions may be more vital for commercial initiatives such as MAAS, as they have to survive in a competitive market. However, the time for free public experiments might be over soon and governance arrangements for user involvement will become a critical requirement for any smart mobility initiative.