Environmental and traffic data for the population in the Smart Cities, with Yunex Traffic

Yunex Traffic develops mobility ecosystems and services for the smart city to make mobility safer, more efficient and more sustainable with pioneering infrastructure and transport solutions. To date, Yunex systems have used traffic and environmental data to improve traffic flow in cities and thereby reducing pollutant emissions.

As a next step, Yunex developed the idea of ​​making this data accessible to the general public and turned to us to develop a viable product concept from the idea. The guidelines quickly became clear: 

• The abstract data, which can only be understood by experts, had to be made understandable for the layman.  
• The product had to be adaptable to the different situations of each municipality. Not every city has the same mobility offering or a comparable level of sensor equipment to record the various data. 
• The product should also serve as a marketing tool for the respective municipalities to make progress in sustainability and digitalization visible. 
• The product should help motivate the population to use sustainable means of transport, such as rental bicycles or public transport. 
• The product should be displayed on a dashboard through permanent monitors at different locations in the municipalities. 

The biggest challenge is that there is a clear oversupply of digital information in our society, not a shortage. Simply displaying information, such as bus travel times or charging station locations, was not enough to create real added value and ensure economic viability as a product.

Our aim was to offer users the most relevant information in the best possible format and to avoid redundancies with other information offerings.

To begin with, we looked for pilot municipalities to work with on the product idea. We checked their data, conducted site visits and developed customer journeys with the cities to identify which information could really be useful for citizens at the respective locations. In joint workshops, we were able to outline possible dashboards based on these results. 

The information and feedback from the site visits resulted in concepts for the individual widgets that would make up the dashboard. We cross-checked these for feasibility and specified them for implementation. This was done in close coordination with Yunex and with feedback from the pilot municipalities. 

This allowed us to design a product that provides people with the information they require at each location. The dashboard is populated depending on the user's location and direction of view. For example, if someone arrives by train and leaves the station, that person does not need a train timetable anymore. However, the availability of rental bikes or e-scooters within walking distance could be interesting. If a person is entering the town hall or sitting in a waiting area, current parking space occupancy in the city may be irrelevant, but information about the city's progress in digitalization could be of interest. It's about the fit and the message, not just the data itself. The population is supported in their everyday lives, and the advantages of digitizing the municipality become tangible. Abstract data has become practical use. 

Making data usable and useful is part of our core business, as is developing customized individual solutions. And we love challenges!