CHARLES SHUTTLE
Team Work - with Lance Xie | Experience Design | 2019
A waterway solution and experience elevation
Our design goal is leveraging Boston’s water for public transport and placemaking at the docks. We hope to ease traffic pressure during peak times and improve the commuting experience. Through investigation, we found that a lot of water coverage of the city of Boston but not fully developed.
​DESIGN BRIEF
Background
Traffic congestion has always been a problem in every city, but public water space on Charles River in Boston has not been fully developed, so how to ease the traffic congestion problem in Boston is our starting point.
roughly 29% water
RESEARCH
Second-Hand Research
Through second-hand information, comparing waterway in other cities, we found many advantages of water transportation:
Reliability
Ferries are the most reliable mode on the MBTA system (Four Seasons Commuting)
Mode Preference
Most ferry commuters have access to other modes of transportation–including driving and commuter rail–but choose the ferries
Capital Costs
Ferry service has low capital costs – most vessels are owned by the operator and most infrastructure is owned by other entities (MBTA provides the docks, gangways, and parking at some facilities)
On-time Performance
Fuel
Consumption
Operating Cost
In our case, we chose Charles River Basin as our project location because:
Boston Harbor
MBTA has boats, but most of them only serve around harbor area for long-distance
Population Density Map
As shown in this population density map, Kendall square is one of the most crowded areas
Time spent on different modes of transport
We don’t have an efficient and direct way to transport between sides. Current public transportation will take almost half an hour during rush hour.
Field Research
The area is already well-planned, we could use it as a foundation and build on top of the current layout. And the esplanade lasts very far from the area where we chose to do the placemaking, which provides us a better large scope dynamic.
Experience form Long Wharf to Encore Boston Harbor
1:00pm-5:00pm Nov. 3rd, 2019
Water attracts people and they like to hang around the port and docking area.
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​Encore Water Shuttle can fit 35 people
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Travels at 8-29 knots, precisely 20 minutes for 8 miles of distance
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The shuttle costs $ 1.5M, use 2 Volvo engines at 300hp each, a 9000rpm gyroscopic stabilizer, upper and lower decks with ceiling hight over 6'2
Experience Map
Opportunity
​Layer 1
How to provide an effective way of utilizing water across?
infrastructure
​Layer 2
How to make esplanade a better place for all?
promotion
​Layer 3
How to fix some public transportation related problems such as ticketing, waiting and more?
sublimation
Persona
Lunch Breakers
Age: 35
Job: Headhunter Consultant
Background
I normally work from 9 am to6 pm. There will be a meeting in the morning, then spend most of my morning replying to emails and dealing with clients. There’s an hour lunch break, sometimes up to 90 minutes. I use the time to feed myself with nutritions energy, I’ll take a walk afterword. Sometimes I take a power nap. There always tasks for the afternoon, at last, we have a conclusion group chat at 5:30 before we take off.
Attributes
Professional
Time-sensitive
Rational
Fixed income
Personalities
Time-oriented
Activity-oriented
Worthiness
Absolute Value
Variety
Daily routine
Pain Points
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Lunch break quality is important
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Lack of places for lunch breaks
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Ineffective break provides poor productivity for the afternoon
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Care about a healthy lifestyle
Goal
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Effective and enjoyable lunch break
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Use lunchtime to get recover and energize
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Improve time quality during work hours and off work
Local People
Age: 66
Job: Retired Senior
Background
I’m retired for a couple of years now. But I’m not that old, I still do a lot of things to fill my day. I part-time in volunteering and taking courses. I like to go out doing things and meet people. The city is getting crowded over the past decades, and everything become expensive. But I’ve been here for so long, and I like this city.
Attributes
Value-sensitive
Stubborn
Emotional
Long-standing experience
Personalities
Time-oriented
Activity-oriented
Worthiness
Absolute Value
Variety
Daily routine
Pain Points
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Hard to find seats on public transportations
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The waiting is too long
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Delay and reliability issue
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Pricey tickets
Goal
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Easy and smooth transport around the city
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Be able to sit down comfortably
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Be able to ride cheap
​Storyboard
This storyboard indicates how our program works.
PROTOTYPE
Process
For Esplanade placemaking, we come up with this engaging prototype in order to get feedbacks.
How to Play
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We provide a visual map of the area and a deck of cards with different kinds of amenities. Each participant can freely position as many cards he/she thinks reasonable on the map.
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Then the participant can share thoughts.
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We also ask each participant to choose the favorite 3 amenities.
Results
Top 3:
Coffee Cart
Unique Benches
Public Piano
Feedback
Feedbacks suggest keeping enough blank space, group objects into categories, while keeping different group separate, and prevent overflow. The coffee cart and unique seating are the top choices. Also, consider everything as a dynamic balance.
DESIGN
​Boat Design
What and How to improve
Gaps and Steps
Ingress/Egress Obstacles
cabin layout space-wasting and experience lacking
Analysis
This is our final plan view of Esplanade. We selected these facilities based on the participants.
We inferred different situations based on our persona and how each person will likely to interact with.
By comparing the micro and macro, we can find some common points of the interaction areas in society.
MICRO RELATIONSHIP
