2.1 Design for presence, looking for design space from daily life for mobility.

The mobility system in Texel provides transport within different places of the island or from the mainland to the island and vice versa. Its users, when choosing the type of transport and the vehicle, make trade-offs that will have the objective of improving their well-being and survival.

For example, a married couple with children, when planning their holiday’s week to Texel and thinking about what kind of transport they should use, they might ask themselves: “Should we take the car with us on the ferry or use the public transport of the island”, “We could also take our bikes, but what if there’s bad weather? Will we be comfortable? Will the children be comfortable?”, “Where shall we take the bus? Shall we wait a lot for it to come? Will we have to walk a lot? And how to carry our baggage?”. These trade-offs are a lot of times made unconsciously and rapidly lead to a decision.

In the case of a resident, when planning the daily schedule, transportation is an important matter to be decided, but also a habit of moving from the one place to the other on a certain way. What matters the most for the user, in order to make a decision is which mean of transport will increase his feeling of wellbeing. For example the use of private car is highly preferred as it gives to the user the opportunity to make decisions and change plans any time desired, whether collective transport in Texel is not that flexible. If this is the case in Texel, that the residents prefer to be transported with their private cars, rather than cycle or use collective transport, then how can we suggest a change, towards sustainable mobility, that will please the residents? In this chapter, an analysis of the users’ perception about presence is made by us, with the aim of investigating efficient mobility systems.

Designing for presence is closely related to designing for trust. When building the mobility system for Texel we must think and participate with our own strive for well-being and survival and try to understand as far as we can the feelings and emotions of the users towards the system. Hence, it is very important to interact with the different actors involved in the sub-system as they can provide us with valuable information that we should consider.