#Transportation: Back to the Future
This article will look at the future of public transportation - as it was envisioned back in 2011. When I had joined my first employer after university - CSC - in 2012, it was through a university project that led to an internship, which led to a full employment. I want to talk about this project, which focussed around public transportation and its future.
Together with a some of my co-students I engaged with the folks at CSC Germany to produce a set of (back then) innovative use cases for public transportation, leveraging mobile technologies of all sorts. The result was documented in a short video clip, which you will find at the end of this article. But let me first tell you about the making of and the background.
From the very start of the project I found the subject at hand to be extremely interesting and compelling. Not only did it fit well into my political / social point of view, but it also felt like something that needed to be addressed very urgently. The market leaders, at the time, did a terrible job in modernising their services and market appearance. There were no mobile apps adding actual value. There were no websites you could use without crying bitter tears of end user frustration. And the integration of any service into actual transportation services was zero.
What we did: brainstorm a ton of ideas together with CSC industry consulting folks, distill the most promising ones and create simple mobile website dummies to demonstrate them. We then talked to a real public transport provider to validate our concepts. After that we shot videos for each use case, cut it and hired a voice over professional who did the audio track for us. At the end, after endless post production hours (not my job luckily), we had a quite acceptable piece of media in our hands. Back then, CSC used it to showcase the future of public transport for their customers globally. After that project I was hired into the CSC transportation industry consultancy team and - well, the rest is visible on LinkedIn.
Since back then, the industry surely evolved quite well - yet slow. Two good examples that the industry kind of realised what we envisioned back in 2011:
Moovel
A startup based out of Stuttgart that develops a self-titled app to provide an overlay across multiple means of transport - not only public transportation, but also cabs and car sharing providers. The product is basically a one-stop-shop for your travel planning - regardless where you go and by what means. You buy your ticket right in there and off you go. Simple and efficient.
DB Navigator
This is the mobile app of Deutsche Bahn (german railways). If you have not used it yet, check it out. It has a real lot of nice features, mostly works fine and is pretty well designed for both Android and iOS. It makes travelling for work and in private a lot easier. The website of Deutsche Bahn though has still got a long way to go.
So back to the video. I think what it shows quite well is that the vision was quite concrete back then - yet it took five years of time to have one or two applications / websites that are actually user friendly and make using public transportation easier and more attractive. I am very much looking forward to the next 5-10 years to see how the industry evolves.
Now it's time to reveal the masterpiece. It's the german version, we had an english one too but I could not locate it online. Anyways, enjoy.
http://www.csc.com/de/
Together with a some of my co-students I engaged with the folks at CSC Germany to produce a set of (back then) innovative use cases for public transportation, leveraging mobile technologies of all sorts. The result was documented in a short video clip, which you will find at the end of this article. But let me first tell you about the making of and the background.
From the very start of the project I found the subject at hand to be extremely interesting and compelling. Not only did it fit well into my political / social point of view, but it also felt like something that needed to be addressed very urgently. The market leaders, at the time, did a terrible job in modernising their services and market appearance. There were no mobile apps adding actual value. There were no websites you could use without crying bitter tears of end user frustration. And the integration of any service into actual transportation services was zero.
What we did: brainstorm a ton of ideas together with CSC industry consulting folks, distill the most promising ones and create simple mobile website dummies to demonstrate them. We then talked to a real public transport provider to validate our concepts. After that we shot videos for each use case, cut it and hired a voice over professional who did the audio track for us. At the end, after endless post production hours (not my job luckily), we had a quite acceptable piece of media in our hands. Back then, CSC used it to showcase the future of public transport for their customers globally. After that project I was hired into the CSC transportation industry consultancy team and - well, the rest is visible on LinkedIn.
Since back then, the industry surely evolved quite well - yet slow. Two good examples that the industry kind of realised what we envisioned back in 2011:
Moovel
A startup based out of Stuttgart that develops a self-titled app to provide an overlay across multiple means of transport - not only public transportation, but also cabs and car sharing providers. The product is basically a one-stop-shop for your travel planning - regardless where you go and by what means. You buy your ticket right in there and off you go. Simple and efficient.
DB Navigator
This is the mobile app of Deutsche Bahn (german railways). If you have not used it yet, check it out. It has a real lot of nice features, mostly works fine and is pretty well designed for both Android and iOS. It makes travelling for work and in private a lot easier. The website of Deutsche Bahn though has still got a long way to go.
So back to the video. I think what it shows quite well is that the vision was quite concrete back then - yet it took five years of time to have one or two applications / websites that are actually user friendly and make using public transportation easier and more attractive. I am very much looking forward to the next 5-10 years to see how the industry evolves.
Now it's time to reveal the masterpiece. It's the german version, we had an english one too but I could not locate it online. Anyways, enjoy.
http://www.csc.com/de/
Love the video - not only the fact that you're called "Tim" in it, but also reflecting how much has really changed in this rather short timeframe. Maybe not really yet in public transportation, but when was the last time you had to explain the difference between push & text message? Or NFC?
AntwortenLöschenI fully agree with you - it's a real miss industrial use of (back then) visionary but available technology has not yet reached higher penetration today - but I also see, e.g. in Manufacturing, an extremely fast take-on right now.
Let's see how much of what we describe as visionary today will be commodity 5 years from now.
/Chris