How to build a common language - designing tools for transport planning

We are witnessing the widespread application of digital technology across the infrastructure planning industry. Infrastructure decision makers are reacting to the availability of data and the flurry of new tools with which to inspect it. They are identifying gaps in existing ways of doing things, like planning where a new metro line goes. These are big, multi-million dollar decisions, with dozens of parties involved.

But how do we build these tools in the first place? As a designer, how do I support transport planners, city economics consultants and engineers in speaking the same language, in order to create experimental tools that sit at the intersection of these disciplines? This talk is about using design as a method of working through an emerging process in transport planning.

What’s the gap?

Deciding where to build a metro route and where to place the stations is complex. It involves civil engineering, transport planning, environmental and economic analysis. Historically, this has been a very long process with slow feedback loops and only a handful of options being looked at. Transport planners didn’t have the data or the methods to iterate quickly in the initial stages, and explore more options at a high level.

Our experiment

We gathered a multidisciplinary team and set out to create a scenario building tool. Its aim was to allow the user to create different versions of a metro route, and look at revenues and costs associated with them, in an easy to use, map-based interface.

Working through iterations of interfaces and the way the user would move through the tool helped the economist identify and prioritise key aspects of the methodology. This made the tool useful globally and provide high-level insights that are valuable at the early stage of infrastructure projects.

In this talk, I’d like to share some of the lessons I learned as a designer on the project, but also share some reflections on this experimental process from the economist and the transport planner on the team.