Empathy for Mobility: Human-Centered Design in Coordinated Plans

Course Details

This session uses “Community in Motion” — the Coordinated Human Services Public Transportation Plan of York and Adams Counties in Pennsylvania — as a case study to demonstrate how planners can use human-centered design, or design thinking, to gather more robust data about stakeholder needs. Presenters introduce the overall philosophy and process of human-centered design and how it compares with more traditional planning processes. The session includes a brief demonstration of and tools for achieving empathy interviews, a fundamental methodology for one-on-one conversations with stakeholders.

Learn about the findings of more than 20 interviews conducted during Community in Motion and the process used to validate identified needs with the larger community. Find out about the development of “personas” — illustrative, hypothetical users of a product or service, “Point of View Statements,” and “How Might We Statements” — critical syntheses of input in the human-centered design process. The session also offers practical tools for cooperatively developing solutions to identified needs with interviewees and relevant stakeholders. Leave with best practices, lessons learned, key takeaways from this planning process, and an opportunity for dialogue with fellow planners.

Learning Outcomes

• Learn the phases of human-centered design and the tools that are most relevant to transportation and community planning.
• Understand the key elements of empathy interviews and how they differ from traditional data-gathering methods in planning.
• Engage stakeholders throughout the entire process, including their direct involvement in brainstorming and prototyping solutions.