A Just Transition?

In the image above the electric vehicle on the left is connected to the charger on the right. The charging cable lies tangled on the pavement in between, making it difficult to pass. The bus in the background is a low-emission bus.

Is this a Just Transition? If not, what will that look like and when and how will that start to happen?

The car and the charging station were designed to reduce our impact on the planet - but now, we’ve created a new accessibility challenge 

We’ve increased our impact on people. 

Efforts to make travel more equitable aren't working. Despite decades of research, strategies and campaigns for more inclusive mobility, progress has been described as slow and piecemeal and in a recent Transport for All report, disabled people described the impact of this injustice as being 'felt in every corner of our lives'.

This doesn't bode well for achieving a Just Transition. We're now redesigning to rapidly decarbonise transport networks. This is essential but if today's new vehicles and travel environments continue to disable and disadvantage, when will that transition start to become fair? When will we begin taking this one-time opportunity to simultaneously and intentionally design for inclusion as we decarbonise?

The Transport for All report also found that disabled people said “they would like to use environmentally friendly modes of transport more, but that they were prevented from doing so by a lack of accessibility and availability. As well as the mode specific barriers … respondents identified some cross-cutting barriers to sustainable travel options…”. These included poorly joined-up routes, financial barriers and low staffing.

“I deeply care about climate justice and desperately want to use greener and more sustainable modes of transport, but these are often inaccessible to me. I can’t cycle, pavements are atrocious which makes wheeling difficult, the Tube is mostly out of bounds, and buses take forever. It means I am sometimes forced to take taxis”

I think there are some key reasons for this lack of progress - things that we’ll need to address if we’re going to fairly decarbonise our mobility:

The language of transport constrains us - an aim to decarbonise transport will lead to just that, cleaner vehicles. Reframing this to achieve more inclusive low carbon journeys gives us a broader aim to lower our impact on people and the planet as we move around. We need a new lexicon of travel. It’ll help us to think in systems too.

The need for speed - Globally, almost half of the buses sold in 2021 were powered by battery electric or fuel cell electric engines. This is great for emissions but was the opportunity taken to design those new fleets to improve services for people? They’re on the road now.

We could learn from the Slow movement: Instead of doing everything faster, let’s do everything at the right speed, in context, in collaboration, finding the right problems to solve in the order that will achieve the best result for everyone.

A lack of vision - Do decarbonisation strategies, electric vehicle pathways and future mobility scenarios really describe what people want and need from their journeys? If we don't know what we collectively want the future to look like, how can we build it? 

By using our collective imagination and creating desire lines, we can guide policymakers, designers, innovators and others toward designing a future that has a lower impact on people and the planet. Between us, we have the collective knowledge, expertise, experience and imagination that can describe a more inclusive, low-carbon world. We just need to value it and create new ways of working that can use it. 

A resilient Status Quo - since decarbonisation currently incorporates little sign of design for inclusion, how can we be sure that today’s approach will result in cleaner mobility without the barriers that we know are baked into today’s travel networks? The lack of detailed plans around both climate action and inclusive travel are gaps waiting to be filled - but they need to be tackled simultaneously.

We can do this

Our slow, careful transition can happen using a framework for planning that helps us to zoom out, see the bigger system, develop our imaginative ideas for alternative future journeys and then zoom in again. We can achieve a planned, fair transition by creating immediate actions that combine efforts to improve inclusion and reduce emissions. This is about fixing today’s barriers as much as looking into the future.

We’ve already prototyped a process for people to imagine more inclusive low-carbon future journeys. By helping service providers to understand journeys as systems we can find where potential exclusions occur throughout.

This will need a radically new approach: one that considers our journeys not just transport. One with guiding principles that value experience, imagination, insight, care, joy, connection and equity. If we bring emissions experts together with exclusion experts we'll discover the most pressing problems to solve and how best to design inclusion into decarbonisation.

Time is short but we can save time by borrowing from existing emissions reduction frameworks and methods such as Science Based Targets and Greenhouse Gas Protocols.

What if we built parallel tools such as inclusion-based targets and Inclusive Journey Protocols? We could start to identify efforts needed to reduce exclusions, who should make them happen and embed them into efforts to reduce emissions.

"The challenge is to avoid being trapped by the present - which requires finding a method, a space, or a point of leverage, with which to think thoughts that don't yet exist"  Geoff Mulgan

New Workshop - A Just Transition or Just a Transition? 29th February.

I’m going to share some ideas for a new approach that uses a new language of mobility and considers our journeys as a system, a combination of experiences beyond transport. In the workshop, we'll work together in groups, exploring a process that could help align and combine efforts to improve inclusion with plans for decarbonisation. It's not claiming to be the answer, but it's a start.

This will be a participative, conversational event. If you play a role in making journeys happen, join us to meet with colleagues from transport, health, academia, policy and third sector along with people who have experience of exclusion and disadvantage when they travel.

Join us for a rare opportunity to use our imagination, create alternative visions of more inclusive and low carbon journeys of the future and shape ideas for a new way of working together.

You can book a place here

Mobility as a (more inclusive) Service

Technology can play a large part in making travel easier to plan and book but it has to work for everyone. Go Upstream worked with Tactran, a Regional Transport Partnership in Scotland, to explore how inclusive their Mobility as a Service (MaaS) apps are. In a nutshell, our groups proposed some improvements, many of which have already been incorporated. Conversations about our journeys has also helped us understand how change can happen.

Planning a journey can be complicated. How do we easily find and organise the information to help us choose the right type of transport, the best ticket, the right route and the most convenient connection? What else do we need to know before we decide? 

Technology can play a large part in making this easier but does it fit with our real lives and the real journeys that we take? This is what Tactran has been aiming to find out.

Tactran is the Regional Transport Partnership covering the heart of Scotland's transport network, covering the local authority areas of Angus, Dundee City, Perth & Kinross and Stirling. Working with technical partners Fuse Mobility, they have been developing Tactran Enable, a journey planning and booking platform which powers three services aiming to support passengers in the region to travel confidently and sustainably. 

Tactran and Fuse have been working with partners in NHS Tayside, Dundee and Angus College and Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park to consider how such a service could help people to confidently travel to their hospital appointment, make it to their lecture on time or plan a day out in the countryside. 

In late 2021, Go Upstream developed and hosted a series of workshops with disabled people and students to explore the use of the Tactran Enable platform and one of the services in particular - the GoNHS Tayside web app.  Working with 24 people over the course of 5 workshops we considered how GoNHS Tayside can support them now and how it could be developed to provide further support.

We learned a lot.

GoNHS Tayside already helps to reduce the complexity of journey planning. Take a look for yourself and you’ll see that it provides different transport options including some that you might not expect such as cycling and even community transport. By showing how the different operators can ‘fit together’ to make up a journey, people felt that the app can take the work out of looking in multiple places and stitching the information together ourselves. 

Our participants told us that good information can provide reassurance and really liked the fact that the app shows an entire return journey, broken down into its different elements. The ‘step-by-step guide’ brings all the information together in one place - we could imagine the journey, a bit like trying it out without leaving our house. For example, we considered attending a hospital appointment and by changing the length of our appointment time we could see how that would change our transport options. 

Participants liked the fact that GoNHS Tayside provides different transport options and combinations - such as taking the train to the destination and catching the bus back again. It reflects real life, we don’t always use the same transport to get there and back. 

Of course, all of these features depend on access to the internet but, as our participants pointed out, the app potentially offers non-digital support because journey options can be printed and taken with us.

This prompted some really interesting conversations about what information we need before and during a journey. It might be the same information but perhaps we need it in a different format and in real time. Have I missed the bus or is it running late? 

So, Tactran’s approach was generally welcomed. It does the hard work of bringing together a lot of the information we need to start planning a journey. Of course, it can always be improved. We held two further workshops to look at improving the ‘look and feel’ of the app and the different ways in which language and icons could be better used to help people navigate - both through the service and through the world.

We also identified that it could include more information for all three services that would provide reassurance and make it easier to navigate as far as the clinic reception desk, the park’s visitor centre or the lecture theatre. Good information about toilets, spaces to rest and shelter, safe crossings and clear routes would make our journey plans more realistic and add even more value to using the app.

Near and Far planning

Thinking about this type of data takes us beyond the usual conception of “journey planning”. By working alongside people we discover what type of information will really support people to make a successful journey and evaluate different travel destinations. Toilets and places to rest are unlikely to feature in current planner apps and yet these are a crucial part of planning a route for many. We also found that there is real value in designing these tools to help people evaluate what to do and where to go.

We started to call this “far planning” - information that we need days or weeks ahead when we plan our trip. Many people use this to consider a range of options in the future – not the immediate journey for today or tomorrow.  The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park app incorporates an “explore” function which is helpful for this.

And then there’s “near planning” which is information we need in the moment, on the journey itself. This includes changes and updates (My bus hasn’t arrived so I’ll need to get a later train - I need to phone the assistance service to let them know). 

Designing with not for

As ever, while learning how we can use a particular service and suggesting improvements that could be made, we also began to consider how the expertise and experience of disabled people is central to the development of these types of tools in the future. With the rising use of technology in every aspect of our journeys, we need to ensure that digital services are created with everyone in mind.

Towards the end of Go Upstream’s involvement in the project, we organised a review event which brought together project partners, Transport Scotland and Local Authority staff as well as some of our workshop participants. We reviewed our process and discussed our findings. 

We took a step back and discussed how we can generally approach this type of work - we drafted some principles together that can be applied to development of more inclusive digital journey planning.

Design for simplicity - avoid taking people in too many digital directions, it’s easy to get lost in a process. Consider when someone might need particular types of information and when they should be asked to input information.

Think beyond the transport - consider the journey context and its purpose not just the journey itself. Discover what type of information will support people to make a successful journey.

Consider what ‘accessible’ means - when we design with people we understand what their journey really looks like and discover the information that will support someone to travel confidently - then we can worry about the ‘nuts and bolts’ of accessibility (font size, colours, navigation buttons…). Incomplete information made ‘more accessible’ is still incomplete information. 

Don’t hold consultations, build relationships - co-design is a process not an event. Plan to involve people early and throughout your process. This is important in both continued improvement of the service but also in disseminating the service into appropriate networks to foster uptake and use.

Valuing and acting on what we learn

So what’s happened as a result? Well, some of the group’s suggestions have already been incorporated into the app. 

• Layouts and features have been improved for better screen reader compatibility and clarity

• Suggested journeys have been filtered to propose more realistic options

• Text has been simplified and symbols used where appropriate

As ever, some of the most effective changes are the smallest. Two features on the home page were quite confusing to our participants. Removing one and simplifying the other has made it easier for people to quickly search for journey information with no impact on the quality of the results.

The ability to change the length of your appointment to get accurate journey information - which is a really useful feature - is now on the home page which is more sensible.

All of the changes made, and still to come, happened because we (virtually) sat next to people and spent time understanding what their priorities are on a journey, what they need and how best to take people through a process.    

Steve Cassidy from Fuse Mobility reflected on the process:

“As a software supplier working in mobility / Mobility as a Service(MaaS)  we have learnt such a lot from Go Upstream’s work.  Our MaaS tools have all been built on extensive co-design with user groups but there is nothing quite like sitting alongside someone using the product you have created!  Go Upstream highlighted specific issues - great for the product we are creating  - but also contextualized any issues in a really engaging and positive manner - great for the service we are creating.  The multi stakeholder workshops were so helpful (and enjoyable!) for the project, touching on governance of services, marketing and awareness raising and branding.  These are so often overlooked in the MaaS world”.  

Hussein Patwa, accessibility consultant and workshop participant considered the updated site and commented:

“It’s great that Go Upstream group’s feedback, based on disabled users’ experiences, has been acted upon: the NHS site is easier to use and is a giant leap forward for accessibility and easier access to health services in Tayside. Great job.”

Future journeys - what will good look like?

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) recently published “Where Next? Uncertainty in transport’s path to net zero”. It highlights that, while the UK government is committed to cutting emissions by 78 per cent by 2035 on its path to net zero by 2050, we’re uncertain about how emissions from transport will be reduced.

The report makes important recommendations, particularly the calls for Government to “better define the most desirable, equitable vision of the future of transport” and “engage the public in a national conversation about the need to reduce emissions from transport”.

Creating a vision is key and I think we need to go further by broadening our conversations to help us imagine the most desirable, equitable vision of the future of low carbon journeys.  

While we know that inaccessible transport can make travel difficult for many, the design of services, environments and experiences before, during, between and after the transport can also be challenging. We need to design all aspects of our journeys to be inclusive and in context if we’re to make it possible for everyone to get out and about.

If we can’t easily plan the best route, walk safely to the bus stop, find a suitable toilet at the station or rest along the way, we might not have the option to use the bus.

And now, more than ever before, taking a more holistic view of journey design is critical if we are to lower transport emissions by encouraging and enabling greater use of public transport.

If the focus for decarbonising transport is replacing polluting vehicles with cleaner ones, we ignore the importance of making it possible for everyone to use that transport as part of their journey - the need to simultaneously design more inclusive journey planning, safer and enabling environments, clearer information and much more (not to mention making cleaner vehicles more accessible).

If we can’t easily plan the best route, walk safely to the bus stop, find a suitable toilet at the station or rest along the way, we might not have the option to use the bus.... even if it’s electric.

Many, if not all, aspects of our journeys are likely to be redesigned in the near future to be better for the planet so let’s take the opportunity to also make them more inclusive.  

But we can only do this if we have a collective vision of what we want and the report highlights why “The energy and investment that must go into reducing emissions should also align behind a vision of a better transport system. To achieve the maximum benefits from decarbonisation, we must therefore think beyond the existing transport system to imagine a wider range of possible futures”

In our Future Journeys work we help people to imagine more inclusive low carbon journeys - learning about plans for a lower carbon future in different sectors that we encounter during our travels, then imagining more inclusive versions of them and using these ideas to tell stories of entire journeys that are equitable, sustainable and desirable.

We’ve imagined different recycling systems, safer pathways, better seating, fewer charging cables, more supportive information, lower energy toilets and more.

Working through this with people who are disabled and disadvantaged by journeys today is essential if we are to avoid eco-ableism - creating solutions that address the climate emergency but continue to discriminate in favour of non-disabled people.

Let’s not replicate or amplify the barriers and injustices that already exist.

By developing these experience-based stories, we’re creating a vision for every step of our future journeys, based on peoples’ expertise and experience of exclusion, combining ideas for what’s best for people and for the planet. 

Stories can help us to describe what we want good to look like - and what the future we want might feel like.

As the IPPR points out “It is only through design that the UK government can ensure that the pathway taken is fair and that we end up with a transport system that works for everyone”.

By inviting policymakers, designers, manufacturers, innovators and others into our process, we can support more collaborative, informed design, ensuring that we create a fairer society and better travel experiences as we respond to the climate emergency.     

We urgently need to imagine more Inclusive Low Carbon Journeys together and create a vision of future journeys that are desirable, equitable and good for the planet. Only then can we can work towards a low carbon future that everyone can take part in.

Catching the Electric Bus - workshop 26th May

If we stop and think about the different elements that make up a bus journey, there are lots of them. Planning the journey, getting to the bus stop, waiting at the bus stop, the journey on board, connecting with other services… you get the idea. 

In fact, during our journeys we encounter a complex collection of products, services, environments and experiences and we know that many people are disabled by the design of these different elements of travel, not just ‘inaccessible’ vehicles.  And yet we still design individual journey elements in isolation. So, as we move through the journey the rules change, the signs are different, unexpected things happen, things feel like they are inconsistent and could be more joined up. 

Many of us recalibrate, swerve the challenges and take the knocks, but many others aren’t able to do this. Many people are disabled and disadvantaged by different elements of different stages of the journey. If I can’t understand the timetable or walk safely to the bus stop or find a suitable toilet at the station, I might not be able to choose to use the bus even if I would like to. 

Changing our travel behaviours is one of the most effective climate-positive actions we can take so we need to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to choose to take part. As we respond to the climate emergency we need to recognise that transport is only part of our journey and decarbonising transport is only part of creating Net Zero travel. 

If we’re going to avoid creating low-emission transport networks that continue to disadvantage and disable people, we need to design journeys as an entire experience - journeys that have fewer impacts on people and the planet. If people can’t easily plan a lower emission journey, walk safely to the new transport hub or find a suitable toilet at the redesigned station, they still might not be able to choose to use the bus even if it is electric. 

How do we ensure that we redesign low carbon experiences, products, services and environments, that enable everyone to be able to choose to travel sustainably? 

We’ve been working with people who are disabled by current transport systems and learning about plans and designs for a low carbon world from service providers, innovators, designers and policy makers in related sectors. By applying our experiences of exclusion to these plans, we’ve imagined more inclusive versions of them.

We’re designing Inclusive Low Carbon Journeys.

By turning these informed imaginations' into stories we can create something that seems to have been missing - a vision of what low carbon journeys could and should look like, informed by real experience. 

We’ve started writing a story already.

By taking part in this process and using our stories, service providers, innovators, designers and policy makers and more can ensure that their designs for a low carbon world are made more inclusive. 

If you’d like to find out more about our Future Journeys process and imagine a more inclusive low carbon bus journey, join us on Thursday 26th May at 2pm for a one hour online “Catching the Electric Bus” workshop.

Sign up for our newsletter or get in touch using the form below and we’ll send you a Zoom link.  

The future of public toilets - inclusive and sustainable

The image shows a weathered wooden hut with a sign on the door that reads ‘Compost Toilet’. We can see water, perhaps the sea, behind the hut. The image was taken on a Scottish Island.

Public toilet provision is a public health issue and a central part of our conversations about designing better journeys.

As the Guardian recently reported 'Britain has lost an estimated 50% of its public toilets in the past 10 years. This is a problem for everyone, and for some it is so acute that they are either dehydrating before going out or not leaving home at all' .

We’ve known that this is a problem for a long time and many continue to campaign for better design, more options and more provision. But there’s something else we need to think about - designing for the climate. Using lower carbon energy sources, reducing water usage, building with new materials … every aspect of our environment will need to be redesigned in the coming years to reduce our impact on the planet. Including toilets. Every new building, every refurbishment, every redesign that includes a public toilet will (hopefully) be designed to be more sustainable.

And when we redesign for the planet we’ll need to ensure that they’re much more inclusive too.

This is what our Inclusive Low Carbon Journey work aims to do. Working with people who are disabled and disadvantaged by our transport services, we’re learning about plans and designs for a more sustainable future and focusing our expertise and experience to imagine how those designs could be more inclusive. We’re turning that imagination into stories.

In our first workshop we imagined a future inclusive, sustainable toilet and wondered if our digital devices would alert those movement-sensors to leave the lights on a little longer. It’s great that the lights turn off and save energy when we’re not in there, but sometimes…

We also hoped that the toilet was free to use and open 24 hours.

Last Thursday, our Future Journeys group hosted a discussion about the future of public toilets, listening to a couple of presentations and then using our imagination to come up with some ideas for a mobile, accessible toilet of the future.

Our friends at Pamis told us about the Changing Places Toilets campaign and discussed the different options for their design. We heard about the Pamiloo (a version of the Mobiloo) a mobile changing places toilet. And our guests from the Public Toilet Research Unit at the Royal College of Art shared their work, including the Great British Toilet Map and the amazing Tinkle - a collection of resources, articles, events and networks of people working towards better public toilets. There’s a lot out there - take a look at Network Rail’s design guidance for Public Toilets In Managed Stations for example and the Highlands Comfort Scheme which provides grants to pubs, restaurants, hotels and village halls to allow public use of their toilets, expanding the range of options across the region.

We were reminded that getting design right, such as colour contrast, the colour of the lighting and mirror placement, is really important to be inclusive. Back in 2019 many of us were involved in A Public Inconvenience, a project looking at the challenges of finding an appropriate toilet on a journey - our report came up with a lot of recommendations. .

We know what we need to do to start creating more inclusive toilets.

What we need to do now is consider inclusion and sustainability together. So, towards the end of our gathering we set ourselves a challenge - imagine a mobile, accessible toilet that has a lower impact on the planet. We heard some great ideas - use solar panels to power the hoist and rain water to flush. Use low energy bulbs and offer a choice of lighting colours. Include something to show how long the toilet will be occupied. Campaign for the electric charging point infrastructure to enable this vehicle (whatever type it might be) to use it. But we had many questions too - what about lower energy heating? Could we call the toilet to us, Uber-style?

We’re using these ideas and insights to develop our Inclusive Low Carbon Journey story - a vision for a more inclusive journey of the near future that impacts less on the environment.

We’ll be holding more discussions to learn about other plans for a low carbon future. Get in touch if you’d like to take part.

Inclusive and sustainable public toilets workshop, 20th January

The image shows a turnstile entry to a public toilet. It ‘only accepts’ 10p and 20p coins and a hand-written note is taped to the front with instructions about how many coins are required. The floor looks wet and nothing looks very clean.

Back in 2019, we were part of a project, working with disabled people to look in detail at the challenges that people face trying to find an appropriate, inclusive toilet on journeys. We learned how important good public toilet provision is to help disabled people to travel.

As we respond to the climate emergency and different parts of our journeys are redesigned to be more sustainable, how do we ensure that they also remain inclusive? If toilets are designed to use less water and to be more energy efficient, for example, how do we ensure that these designs work for everyone?

The best way, we think, is to work with disabled people to start creating a vision for what public toilets could and should look like in the future and share this with designers, makers, manufactures, policy makers and more.

As part of our regular Thursday afternoon discussion about Future Journeys, we're going to learn about ideas for future public toilets from friends at PAMIS (who lead the campaign for Changing Places Toilets in Scotland) and the Public Toilet Research Unit at the Royal College of Art (developers of the Great British Toilet Map).

Then we'll work together to develop some ideas for more inclusive, sustainable toilets and use these insights and ideas to update our Inclusive Low Carbon Journeys story.

We have limited places for our workshop on Thursday 20th January but if you’re interested in learning more about the future of public toilets and helping us to create a vision for more inclusive, sustainable toilets use the form below to sign up.

Our event will run from 2:00 until 3:30 with a short break.

By the way, we publish a Future Journeys email newsletter each week - if you would like to receive this to hear about more events like this then you can subscribe here.

---

Inclusive and sustainable public toilets workshop - 2pm, 20th January

Ensuring a Just Transition through designing Inclusive Low Carbon Journeys

Designing well for the planet means designing so that everyone can take part in a low carbon future. Simply focusing on cleaner vehicles won’t fix the inequalities that are currently built into our transport networks and environments.

If we can’t understand the timetable, walk safely to the bus stop (past those recycling bins), easily get on and off the bus - or there's no suitable toilet at the station - we probably still won’t be able to choose to use the bus, even if it is electric.

Over at the Future Journeys Observatory, we’ve been working with people who are disadvantaged and disabled by today’s mobility services, broadening the conversation from transport decarbonisation to inclusive low carbon journeys, imagining more inclusive versions of low carbon services, environments and vehicles that are planned for the near future.

We’re working with friends at Snook to combine these these imagined futures and create a vision for more inclusive low carbon future journeys - journeys that everyone can choose to take.

On November 10th we’ll be sharing what we’ve learned with the design community who are gathering for Design for Planet, a landmark event at the V&A Dundee, bringing together experts in the sector leading on sustainability and climate action.

You can join us online as we share the vision for a journey in 2026 and explore how taking an inclusive approach can help us to design low carbon mobility and services that work for everyone.

Inclusive Low Carbon Journeys

We know, from the work that we and others have done, that people are discouraged, disadvantaged and disabled by the design of many different products, services, environments and experiences along a journey.

For example, this recent study of nearly 3000 bus stops in San Fransisco showed that shelter, seating and signage varies greatly across the city. They also found that areas with “a higher than average share of white residents were more likely to have shelter, seating and unobstructed curbs than those with a higher than average share of people of color”.

A Ph.D. student spent a summer studying every street-level city bus stop in San Francisco — nearly 3,000 of them.

This is what he learned: https://t.co/9W4pVbIAi0

— Bloomberg CityLab (@CityLab) September 8, 2021

It has always been important to consider the design of the entire journey to reduce inequalities and to reduce the ways in which people are disabled and disadvantaged. But it feels even more important now as we rush to ‘decarbonise’ transport. Replacing polluting vehicles with cleaner technology is vital but, as this study shows, unless we fix the seating, shelter and signage, catching an electric bus will be just as much of a challenge for many people.

That’s why we’re suggesting that we design Inclusive Low-Carbon Journeys, considering the many things that make up a journey, how they combine to enable (rather than disable) us to get out and about and how ‘low-carbon’ versions of these can be made more inclusive.

We’re planning an event to look into this - more details here.

Designing for rest

Photo by Konstantine Trundayev

In this image we see three rows of plastic yellow seats. The two rows in the foreground are empty and facing each other. In the background, a person dressed in a suit and tie is lying asleep across a row of seats, under a window. His head is possibly resting on a bag. Under the seats we see a sign saying 'Life Preservers' so this photo was probably taken on a ferry.

It caught my eye because I've just been reading about the work of Raquel Meseguer Zafe, an artist who lives with chronic pain and needs to frequently lie down to rest. 'For a while my world got really small. And so in 2016 I began to play with lying down in public so I could be out in the world more: I lay down on trains, in galleries, on benches'. She noticed how 'cities are designed for verticality and movement, rather than rest or pause' and how we view people at rest. She has been collecting stories from other disabled people about their experiences and uses her work to advocate for more resting spaces and 'horizontal events'.

Perhaps this is going to become even more important in the near future. A recent BBC documentary highlighted the challenges of living with long covid and in this recent article, Gareth Ford Williams wonders how we can prepare for this in terms of designing for accessibility. 'Not everyone with Long-COVID will identify as having a disability or being neurodivergent, but their lived experiences and barriers will be ones that we are familiar with. The added benefit of more readily accommodating fatigue as a characteristic will also benefit the whole community'.

With around a million people in the UK now living with long covid we'll need, more than ever, to understand and design for people with the range of symptoms that it brings, including its most reported symptom - fatigue.

We often talk in our work about the need to be able to rest - sitting or lying down - during our journeys and how there is often little opportunity to do so. Knowing where we can rest is a key part of journey planning for many.

For many people with other conditions, fatigue is a challenge that they have lived with for many years but we have not recognised or designed for it. Gareth Ford Williams describes searching for “accessibility+fatigue” and found that '...most of the articles were about individuals managing the condition rather than ‘us’ as an industry considering the impacts of fatigue in our approach to design… so is Long-COVID showing us that we’ve been missing a trick all this time?'

Yes, I think it probably is.

This originally appeared in Go Upstream’s Future Journeys weekly newsletter. You can subscribe here.

Talking about travelling well with dementia

Myra and Betty have noticed a difference along the promenade in Prestwick. There are new seats now that allow people to rest along the way. The walk is flat, not too long, just right.

Carl from Paths for All came along to our regular Future Journeys discussions this afternoon to tell us more about their work with Dementia Friendly Prestwick, making the area along the seafront more accessible in different ways.

Our wide ranging discussions also included Pat and Louise from THRED an organisation based in Liverpool who have joined up conversations about how we can connect communities to reduce isolation and loneliness and improve the wellbeing of people with dementia and their carers. THRED focuses on the role of transport in keeping people connected and have recently undertaken research led by people living with dementia, exploring how urban and rural transport systems help people diagnosed with dementia to live independently for longer.

We were also joined by Gerry from the STAND group a peer-support group of people living with dementia in Fife. Gerry described how they have developed and delivered dementia awareness courses for local businesses including transport companies. He described a visit to a local bus station that highlighted many challenges caused by design that didn’t take vision impairment into account.

Finally we heard about StudioLR’s Inclusive Symbols project, developing more inclusive signage by working with people living with dementia. This work led to the development of the Any Disability symbol launched in Parliament in 2019.

Lots covered this week and such an important subject. We all reflected on how we had discussed vision and hearing impairments, information processing, isolation, employment and transport to health appointments. Dementia brings so much more than memory challenges. Thanks to everyone who joined us and took part.

Future Journeys ‘Travelling well with Dementia’ event - 3rd June

On Thursday 3rd June, our regular Thursday afternoon Future Journeys discussion will focus on travelling well with dementia and we'll be joined by friends from THRED who aim to 'connect transport, health, research and the economy'. Their research is led by people living with dementia and we'll hear about their recent work looking at how urban and rural transport systems can help people diagnosed with dementia to live independently for longer.

If you would like to join us on Zoom please sign up below and we’ll send joining instructions very soon.

Future journeys

Go Upstream’s work has always been about bringing people with dementia together with service providers to design better journeys. Finding those aspects of getting out and about that can be a real barrier and creating opportunities to work together on changes that could make a big difference.

So how to respond to this global situation when we can’t physically bring people together and or take journeys?

There isn’t an easy, immediate answer and maybe there shouldn’t be.

We’ve pressed a global pause button on moving around and it’s forcing us to ask some huge questions that are going to take some thinking through. What will the role of public transport be? Will we move around in the same way, in the same numbers? What will new services look like and what will give us all the confidence to use them?

People with dementia have shared their experience of uncertainty and anxiety on journeys and we’ve spoken many times about the need for services to inspire confidence, otherwise people will stop getting out and about and become more isolated. Maybe now, more than ever, people with dementia can provide experience and expertise that can help service providers to rebuild, reconfigure and reimagine journeys that help everyone to feel safe and confident.

So that’s the focus for now - wondering what on earth will journeys look like, watching what’s happening around the world as services adapt and exploring how we can we combine this with our own experience, bringing people with dementia together with service providers in new ways to help redesign journeys for the future.

Designing better and cleaner journeys

The trip home from Turin was supposed to be entirely by rail. Three trains, changing in Paris and London. But due to a major national strike across France, there were no trains. At all. 

I was looking forward to making the trip. Yes, it would have been an amazing view of the Alps as I worked, but the main reason for taking a 12 hour train ride was to try and travel in ways that are less damaging to the climate.

This has to become a major consideration - not just to make a difference myself but also to start meaningful conversations about the climate in the solutions we develop with people with dementia.

An important part of designing better journeys is to play a part in developing and encouraging more sustainable journeys that inflict less damage on the environment. Pubic transport will surely play a big role in this and we have to learn how to incorporate conversations about the climate into our own work.

More EFID conversations…

I’m just back from The EFID conference in Turin - a fantastic gathering of people from across Europe, sharing stories and experiences from their projects.  What a pleasure to gather again with friends from Hungary, France, Italy, Belgium, Germany and beyond… speaking about inclusion, learning and evaluation and most importantly, hearing the views and experiences of people living with dementia. 

Probably the highlight of the trip was a visit to the Rifugio Re Carlo Alberto, a care home which offers residential and day care services in the Val Pellice region, about an hour south of Turin. Molly and Marcello organised a fantastic afternoon and we were made welcome by everyone. We heard about the work that Rifugio has done to bring the local community into the home (for example, an outdoor film festival) and also the work that people who live there have done to raise awareness about dementia in the surrounding towns and villages.

Hilary, Helen and Agnes finished the conference with some honest conversation about the reality of involvement. Yes, they described the importance of including people in projects and processes but importantly, we heard about the impact it can have. The resulting fatigue and support required. The organisation needed at home to ensure that loved ones are cared for too. 

Thanks to EFID for continuing to nurture and support this brilliant network.  

Pour une société inclusive

One of the many benefits of being involved in the European Foundations’ Initiative on Dementia has been making links with organisations such as the Fondation Mederic Alzheimer. Back in early 2018, the Foundation commissioned some research, visiting various projects around Europe to discover different approaches to working with people with dementia, to inform future work in France. Go Upstream was one of these and we spent a couple of days with Foundation staff, exploring our methods and findings.

The preliminary results of this research were discussed at a meeting in Paris in May 2018 and the final report Pour une société inclusive has now been published, featuring our work alongside others from the UK, France, Belgium and Switzerland. Delighted to be included!

Drawing from Experience

Can we use comics to describe the experience of living and travelling with dementia?

Here at Go Upstream we’re delighted to announce the launch of our new project, Drawing From Experience.

Developed in association with V&A Dundee and University of Dundee, and funded by the Dementia Services Development Trust, Drawing From Experience will take a new approach to ensuring that the voices of people living with dementia are heard by service providers and designers – through the medium of comics, and aided by the skill of some very talented artists.

An exceptionally expressive medium, comics and graphic novels have a long and fascinating history and are increasingly appreciated for their use in describing personal experiences. Autobiographical comics are popular, and along with the growth of medical humanities – an interdisciplinary field focusing on how literature and culture contribute to medical education – an associated genre of comics has evolved, named ‘Graphic Medicine’ by doctor and comic artist Dr Ian Williams. There has already been a lot of local work in this direction; in 2017, a collaboration between the University of Dundee’s Scottish Centre for Comics Studies, Ink Pot Studios, Christopher Murray of Comics Studies and Divya Jindal-Snape of the School of Education and Social Work produced an excellent comic that deals with issues of fibromyalgia.

Our project relates to this exciting area of research: Drawing From Experience will use comics as a way of engaging with and representing the varied personal and travel experiences of people living with dementia. We will commission comic artists to take journeys with people living with dementia and collaboratively develop work that describes that experience.

We’re curious:

Image: sketch of a bus ramp - can we develop images with people with dementia to accurately describe experience?

• Can this approach help people with dementia to more accurately describe their experiences?

• Can we gain new insights that lead to the development of more inclusive services?

• Can comics and graphic novels provide information and training materials that are more accessible?

• Can the outcomes inform local development plans and transport networks?

With their combination of the visual and the textual and flexible nature, comics have already been used as a unique learning medium in all sorts of contexts. This is what we have in mind – we’re hoping the work created will be used as both an information and teaching tool by transport providers, helping them understand the travel issues faced by people with dementia and how to make their services more accessible.

This is all just starting off and we’ve organised a launch event which will get the ball rolling and see the project sparking connections between different groups. It will take place on Friday 22 March at V&A Dundee. We’ll have some exciting speakers talking about comics, travel and dementia. We’ll hear from local experts about the use of comics in health education, including Megan Sinclair, a PhD student from University of Dundee who will talk about the comic she created exploring her own experience of bereavement.

Join us for a creative afternoon and help us to spark ideas for telling stories that can help to influence the design of services that are truly inclusive.

You can sign up here.

This is just the start of our project, and we’re really excited to see where it goes!

Making Connections

Sign at rail station that says ‘Way out via 58 steps’

How joined-up are your journeys?

We often have to make connections between services. Between the bus and the train, or the train and the taxi... sounds simple but there could be a lot to consider when navigating these spaces.

When I leave the station, will it be obvious where the next service leaves from? What’s the environment like? Is it step-free? If there are 58 steps up to the street, is the lift working today? Is it well lit? If I’ve booked assistance, do services talk to each other and will somebody know that I’ve arrived?

Travel connections can be challenging, potentially creating barriers to travel. And if the challenges lie in the spaces in between services how do we discover them, how do we go about reducing barriers and who is responsible for making improvements?

This will be the focus of a new project that brings together a broad group of partners, led by Go Upstream and funded by Transport Scotland - we’re calling it Making Connections: the spaces in between. We’ll be bringing disabled people and transport providers together to experience connections together and explore what we can do to improve them, together.

We’re tapping into the expertise developing here in Scotland around improving environments and services for people with dementia . Making Connections will benefit hugely from the growing network of projects and organisations funded by the Life Changes Trust - partners include StudioLR who are working on improving signage, Paths for All who are changing the way that we think about inclusive outdoor environments and the British Deaf Association who will ensure that the views of deaf people who are affected by dementia are included. We’re also delighted that Alan Ainsley is part of the team, combining his design expertise with experience from developing services such as Macmillan’s Transforming Care After Treatment (TCAT) programme. The University of Edinburgh are our evaluation partners and PAMIS bring their unique experience of supporting people with profound and multiple learning disabilities.

We’re just starting this all off, working with CalMac, NorthLink Ferries and ScotRail to explore connections between trains and ferries. We’re inviting operators and disabled people to initial workshops, to join us on journeys to navigate connections on Scotland’s east and west coasts, and help us to identify connection barriers that people face. We’ll then develop ideas for improvement - aligning with Scotland’s Accessible Transport Framework.

Yes, we’re aiming to find some immediate improvements, but we’re also looking to develop a new way of working, a model for exploring travel environments and connections together.

**Our first workshop will take place in Aberdeen on 22nd February - you can sign up here.

More information and updates over at www.makingconnections.scot

'Welcome' Aboard!

Today we’re announcing a new project that Go Upstream is leading, working with people with dementia to improve the experience of assisted rail travel.

Our project team was among the winners of The Rail Accessibility Competition, run by the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB), which awarded grants to organisations ‘... whose innovative ideas will make a difference to the lives of disabled passengers travelling on the railway’.

We hear some great stories about travelling by rail and services such as Passenger Assist can make a real difference for people who need help getting on and off trains and making connections. However, we’ve also heard stories about people not being met or assistance not being available. Circumstances can change quickly during a journey - disruption, delays, cancellations and bus replacement services can disrupt the support that Passenger Assist offers and a simple journey can become a complicated and anxious situation for passengers and staff alike.

We’re not the only ones. This Office of Rail and Road research, carried out over 4,000 interviews about the experience of Passenger Assist and found that passengers wanted better staff training about disability, reassurance that they will be met, revisions to the booking system and improved arrangements at the station.

Now, Go Upstream is all about better staff understanding and designing an improved service, but improving the system will need some technical input. Enter Neatebox, an Edinburgh-based company who have developed some brilliant technology in the form of the Welcome app, developed to enable people with disabilities to arrange personalised assistance at destinations such as offices and hotels.

So, we wondered, could ‘Welcome’ be used to enhance Passenger Assist and provide a more personalised experience of arranging and receiving support? And if we combine it with Go Upstream’s experiential training to improve staff knowledge of dementia, could we improve the assistance experience even further? Well maybe, but we won’t know for sure unless we work closely with people with the greatest expertise - people who live and travel with dementia. So we asked our friends at DEEP if some of the groups in its national network of people living with dementia might be partners in the project.

Of course, as passengers, we’re only one half of the assistance story. The teams who deliver the service are also full of experience and ideas. Who better to partner with than LNER, who operate east coast rail services on routes totalling 936 miles, from Inverness and Aberdeen to London and many places in between.

But wait, there’s more! We also need to ensure that we’re bringing everybody’s design skills into the mix and building a service that reflects everyone’s needs. So when we asked our friends Hazel and Mike at Open Change in Dundee if they would join in too, we were delighted when they said yes. Open Change are service design experts with a wealth of experience in helping groups to realise their design potential and build solutions together.

As Hazel says ‘Making public transport inclusive for everyone is a great opportunity - and a challenge’

It is indeed a challenge and I’m looking forward to taking it on with a brilliant team and the support of the competition organisers the RSSB. The ‘Welcome’ Aboard team not only brings a wealth of experience and enthusiasm but we’re collectively on a mission to weave the expertise of people living with dementia into the development of new services.  

Boarding/Onboarding

If you’re building a digital service then onboarding is a big deal - it's the process used to introduce new users to sign up for, or join, a service. UserOnboard looks at how various services do this and describes it as 'the process of increasing the likelihood that new users become successful when adopting your product'.

You know that really nice online experience - it feels easy, safe, clearly explained, no surprises. You'll also probably know other, less-than-happy experiences - clunky, not feeling secure, not sure what's happening next or where you are in the process.

It’s important to help your customers to get know to your service, to orient them and help them to know what to expect. The language used and the context created helps us through a process and, if it doesn’t go well, we might give up or, even worse, tell others about the poor experience. 

I've been wondering about the experience of boarding a plane, thinking about it as joining a service. Boarding as Onboarding. After all, it's the point at which you move from the airport to the airline - it might even be your first offline interaction with the airline. 

Here are three recent, different experiences I've had - we'll call them Gate 1, Gate 2 and Gate 3:

Gate 1

We actually boarded a bus because the plane was parked miles away. It was 6:45am, cold, wet and windy. After a slightly uncomfortable ride to the other side of the airport, we were delivered to the plane, exposed to the elements as the bus drove away. 80 people, one staircase. It was a long, cold and damp wait for those of us near the back of the queue.

I guess if anyone had booked assistance they would have taken a separate journey to the plane? I hope so. 

Gate 2

For a start, the signage about where to queue at the gate was confusing and, as the crowds gathered, the level of confusion seemed to increase.  Since it was a full flight, passengers were invited to volunteer to put their hand-luggage in the hold and in return they would be given priority boarding.

A few minutes later three recorded announcements invited different groups to board:

• Those who had paid for priority boarding,
• those with children
• people 'requiring assistance'

A fourth announcement invited passengers who had volunteered their hand luggage for the hold but, since there was nothing recorded for this, it was shouted.

In the meantime staff walked along the line telling people to put small bags inside bigger bags… but nobody was really sure why. 

All of these announcements competed with others from a nearby gate, along with the general hum of the airport. I could barely hear a thing and, from the confused looks around me, I wasn’t the only one. 

I hope I don't have to board through Gate 2 again.

Gate 3

A better experience. My boarding pass simply had the words Group 4 on it.

Groups 1 to 3 boarded first and I had no idea why - maybe they'd paid extra or requested earlier boarding. Maybe they'd won a raffle. I didn’t know or need to know. The process was easy to understand, clearly explained and had no surprises.

It can't be easy moving hundreds of people through a door and onto a plane against the clock, answering questions and checking passports, but there must be ways to make these stressful situations less intimidating, less uncomfortable. 

Having made it through security, anxiety levels already high, it can be yet another set of decisions to make with more queuing, more instructions to follow, all based on announcements that can be less than clear.

If boarding was treated as onboarding, a vital part of designing the travel experience, perhaps it could add to a journey rather than turning it into a bad story that we tell for years to come.

'Are you lost?'

I’m just back from a few days in Dublin, finding out about the work that’s being done to help people travel with hidden disabilities at the airport there and meeting up with some fellow EFID awardees at the Irish Dementia Working Group. 

With a little time to spare, I spent some time discovering the city, always on the look out for how local transport works.

The first thing I noticed was the road crossings - we are often told about crossings that don't allow enough time to cross or that change from green to red very quickly. In Dublin an amber person appears as we crossed the road  - I'm not sure if there's more time allowed but, if you were taking things a little more slowly, it might feel as though someone was on your side? I liked it.

I took a local train through the city centre. It’s a good, regular service.

At Connolly Station I noticed some staff helping people using wheelchairs board with a ramp so I asked them afterwards about assisted travel and if people needed to book.

Some do, they said, but they don’t need to, just let us know when you arrive and we’ll help you on to the train. Sounds good.

I headed outside to a bus station 5 minutes down the road and, with my toilets-on-a-journey hat on, took a look inside. As often happens (and we’ve talked about this in our project) people wonder why you’re lurking around the toilets, but not going inside.

This was friendly Dublin though, where local people make the first move to chat.

‘Are you lost?’ the woman asked me as I peered at the sign to the accessible toilet. No, I said, just wondering what facilities are available. She looked a bit unsure. She had been waiting outside for a while apparently and yes, she explained, there’s only one 'disabled' toilet.

I was just asking her about finding toilets along her journey (and she was starting to frown at me) when a sharp, loud beep started and a light flashed next to the door.  We both immediately thought the same thing - the person inside had pressed an alarm.

‘I hope they’re alright’ she said, looking worried.

‘Open the door!’ a voice shouted from behind us. It didn’t make sense.

And again ‘Open the door!’

We turned and someone in uniform was walking away from us. No explanation. The woman pulled on the door and it opened.

‘There’s nobody in here' she said. 

We exchanged a puzzled look - she had been waiting a while for an empty bathroom.

Clearly a little embarrassed and frustrated, she disappeared inside. I looked again at the notice, which I hadn’t read closely.

So, in order to use the 'disabled' toilet, you had to cross the station concourse about 100 meters away and ask. Or you had to be spotted - which clearly took a while.

At the information desk there’s a button that staff can use to open the toilet door. Maybe it’s the one that they use if someone does press the alarm?

‘It’s to stop everybody using it’ the staff explained when I made the trip across to ask.

At the time (even with my toilets-on-a-journey hat on) I didn’t think to stop and ask ‘how do you decide who gets to use it?’

Perhaps we should focus on systems that enable access, not restrict it. Something simple like a sign that tells us that the toilet is occupied would be helpful.

Later, when I met with the Irish Dementia Working Group, we had so much to discuss and share that I didn’t get time to tell this story, but we talked about the issues it raises. How sometimes the simple fixes can make the biggest difference ...  and the fact that we need to consider how services make us feel?  What about the person wanting - no, needing - to use the toilet. What’s the impact of this system on them? In this case, probably quite negative.

We covered so much over the course of the afternoon and it was a pleasure to spend some quality time together, sharing experiences, opinions and ideas. Yes, we talked about designs and environment and the challenges of travelling with dementia, but we also talked about the need for action, for improvement, for a different approach to design and for real change at a local level, not just more talking. Let's hope we can find ways to collaborate to make some of this happen.  

I don't have toilets-on-a-journey hat by the way, but maybe I should get one.