Page 63 - Process Book A3_Giacomo Grech

CHAPTER 7 REFLECTION

Research phase

The experience of doing such project gave a very broad overview of how much sustainable transport is important not just in terms of

environment but also to lead a better quality of life for the user. However, for improvement purposes, focus groups could have
been given more attention as a data collection technique especially to give a direct voice and discussion from the user perspective in

alignment with the interaction design principle of ‘user-centered’ approach. Furthermore, conducting interviews with people that

are in control of transport systems in Ireland like in Dublin and Belfast or even from other colleges would have
helped to gain more exposure to the project approach.

Ideation phase

During this phase there were a lot of recommendations and solutions that will help the user such as a car locator for parking,

carpooling roaster and more, but due to data proofing and time constraints another solution was chosen. For sustainable travel

to truly have an effect on the users’ daily commute, a system has to be in place whilst the user has a good mindset to make the

decision and use the system. Moreover, creating educational platforms for promoting sustainable travel could also a future
solution for such interaction problem.

User Feedback & Project pair-up

User testing was not possible due to time limitations. Therefore feedback was done from two users chosen by the researcher. In real-

life implementation having professional user testing for such project would have helped in using empathy map techniques and derive
improvements on the user interface. Such an interaction project may sometimes seem impractical to handle for one person. Therefore

it would be better suited if a pair-up even with other colleges and universities to create a sustainable parking system and
eventually present a fully fleshed out solution in due time.

Moving forwards professionally

Moving forward with such project, softwares and coding programmes like ‘Python’ and ‘SQL’ will eventually come into play as a

professional solution to implement such project in real life. However, creating also products like sensors using Arduino as an open-

source hardware may also lead this project to gather data in a parking area and see how much cars go in and out on a day
resulting in having data analytics and move forward on such project with the data gathered.

P.63