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This mobility network will increasingly enable citizens to take full advantage of mobility as ubiquitous and personalized services – consequently, locally bound car ownership will be buried in oblivion.
In this future world, vehicles are widely accessible via a network where citizens no longer own a vehicle in the traditional sense. Access to the network is monetized and revenues are gained from permanent subscriptions to mobility brand providers. To guarantee this hybrid public-private network, industry leaders enter into a cooperative partnership with technology giants to provide the AI and vast data needed to train the interconnected neural-networks of vehicles and streets. As a consequence, public transport is substituted with a new kind of private mobility while the streets and infrastructure are maintained and financed by the state. This democratized access to mobility will offer both the low- and middle-class greater security, joy and freedom.
One example of this benefit is that commuting will become immeasurably more convenient, involving fewer exchanges and modes of transportation for any given trip. Holistic concepts, which do not offer mobility in different means of transportation, but along mobility chains enable fluid transitions between different areas. This seamless experience between several stations enables citizens from e.g. the countryside to participate in an urban life on a more regular and less stressful basis. Even if the merge of home, work, education and leisure have blurred, a physical relocation is still an important part of life, albeit on a less frequent level.
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Traffic belongs to the past.
Entering and riding a vehicle offers space and additional time to work, think or be entertained. Individualized intelligent assistants play a crucial role in accessing the mobility service. Due to a general shift within artificial intelligence, personal assistants will be powerfully interconnected across many areas of your daily life. They support you planning your next travel trip, organize your weekly ratio of food or remind you to buy a birthday present for your sister.
How could mobility as ubiquitous and personalized service in the next twenty to thirty years practically look like? In what way will personal assistants become part of our daily lives and proactively support fluid mobility? Imagine 48-year old Karla, living in the center of a mega-city. Karla needs to see her doctor in the morning. The other day, her personalized intelligent assistant has identified some irregularities measuring her vital values. Interconnecting different areas of her daily life has become an easy task for her assistant. Based on real-time analysis, Karla’s assistant suggests a route to the doctor’s office and books an available autonomous vehicle for the ride. Neither Karla, nor any other citizen of the metropolitan region own cars. Whenever commuting from A to B is required in her daily routine, she demands an available vehicle to pick her up. Private car ownership and public transport have been merged: A monthly subscription enables her to make us of being transported by an individually available module whenever needed.
Entering the vehicle, Karla is welcomed by her assistant that has automatically recognized the different context and seamlessly switched to a different device to support her proactively. They now interact via Karla’s wearable. During the ride, she receives an incoming call. She conducts the call with her wearable, which projects her conversation partner as a hologram while talking.
Having arrived at her destination, she leaves the vehicle to enter the doctor’s office. Her assistant switches to silent mode. At the front desk, she places her wearable on a dock to declare her consent for data transmission. The previously measured vital values are transmitted for the doctor’s diagnosis. The measured irregularities eventually turn out not to be of any serious health issue, but Karla’s doctor recommends to slightly change her nutrition. After the appointment her assistant has adopted the doctor’s recommendations and proposes an adapted nutrition plan for the next 3 months.
Karla decides to do the groceries right after. Her assistant suggests a supermarket within a walking distance. Once in the supermarket, the assistant switches to the shopping robot and guides her through the shop. Based on the data of her adopted nutrition plan, she gets support during shopping.
Having finished shopping, Karla receives a suggestion for a mobility solution to ride back home – displayed on the robot’s interface. The booked vehicle spots her new location and is waiting in front of the entrance, whilst the shopping robot loads the groceries into the vehicle. During the ride, Karla demands for some relaxation and leisure time. Her assistant switches to ambient mode and sets the mood for a relaxed ride back home.
With background in the humanities, sustainable development, and applied anthropology, Mattawan is responsible for user research at designaffairs. Her interest lies in bringing together anthropology, human-centered design, and technology to propel innovation and sustainability for products, services, and the public sector.
Antonia is passionate about the idea of using technology as a means to drive societal transformation processes. According to her, we should not avoid change, but welcome it as an opportunity to transform things for the better. She does not believe in good or bad technology as such, but in our responsibility to actively shape a future worth living in, with human and nature’s rights as a compass.
Joyce is a design researcher at designaffairs. She is fascinated by speculating about potential futures and how design as a cultural practice shapes the way we live. However, she considers the future inseparable from an awareness of the past: looking at examples of the past helps to understand how the discipline of design is being shaped by a society’s complex aspirations.
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