INDIMO 4th Co-creation Workshop: Finalisation of the INDIMO Service & Policy Evaluation Tool

On 24 June 2022, the INDIMO project organised its 4th Co-creation Workshop on the Finalisation of the INDIMO Service & Policy Evaluation Tool in Bologna, Italy. The 6-hour workshop took place within the facilities of the Metropolitan City of Bologna, a member of the INDIMO Co-creation Community. The workshop gathered a diverse group of 22 participants mostly representing the tool’s main target group of policy makers, but also developers and vulnerable end-users in the field of digital mobility and logistics services across Europe.

Objectives

This workshop was a part of the series of co-creation workshops the project is conducting to co-create the INDIMO digital mobility toolbox. In this workshop, the INDIMO Service & Policy Evaluation tool, a component of the INDIMO toolbox, was presented and the structure and content of the same were analysed and discussed. This tool will enable policy makers and user organisations (NGOs) to design strategies necessary for all citizens to fully benefit from the digital transport system and identify strategies to avoid digital exclusion or a digital divide in terms of social and spatial assets.

The key topics evaluated by the tool are digital accessibility and inclusion, cybersecurity and personal data protection, as well as other aspects related to the universal design principles. The tool has the format of a self-assessment questionnaire and will also give user-behaviour nudging suggestions and recommendations to overcome identified barriers.

Report

After being welcomed to Bologna by our local partner, the Institute for Transport and Logistics Foundation (ITL), the INDIMO project was introduced by the project coordinator. Subsequently, in line with the objectives of the workshop, the structure, themes and recommendations of the INDIMO Service & Policy Evaluation Tool were presented. Following this, participants got the chance to go through the steps of the tool, i.e. registration, questionnaire, and results, by evaluating real-life mobility services. At the same time, participants documented their opinion regarding the relevance and applicability of each question of the tool in a separate survey. To wrap up the workshop, participants expressed their overall impression of the tool and main points for improvement.

In terms of the main outcomes of the workshop, it was found that it should be made clear from the start what this tool is for and what it allows to be evaluated. Thus, expectations should be managed and more examples of what can be evaluated should be included. Furthermore, it was recommended to use varying score weighting as some points were deemed more critical than others. Finally, some technical changes, such as a save button to continue the evaluation at a later time, and design improvements for easier readability were suggested.

These conclusions will be incorporated into the further development of the INDIMO Service & Policy Evaluation Tool.

Feedback

Following the workshop, participants were asked to give feedback on the organisation and content of the event. Positively, 71.4% of responders rated the event a 4 out of 5 overall. Constructive criticism expressed in the feedback form will be taken into account for the planning of future events.

The post INDIMO 4th Co-creation Workshop Report appeared first on Indimo Project.

Our team at Poste Italiane is happy to share the video recording of the official launching event held on the 27th of October 2021 in Monghidoro, where all citizens could learn about INDIMO project and the innovative digital locker Punto Poste da Te. The event was organised by ITL and featured the participation of the Mayor of Monghidoro Barbara Panzacchi, Martina Gherardi of Poste Italiane and Eleonora Tu of ITL, the pilot site leader.

The event, shooted by Poste Italiane, was recorded on Youtube, the registration can be found at the following link (in Italian):

Watch video

A practical session, lead by Poste Italiane, was also offered to the public participants to better understand the functionality of the locker.

The digital locker has been installed in a safe and accessible area of the Town Hall, allowing citizens of Monghidoro over 18 years old to use the service, ensuring higher accessibility of online purchases and last mile delivery services, also for people not able to receive parcel at their houses. Besides, the locker guarantees fast performing of transactions.

The Poste Italiane digital locker foreseen by Pilot 1 – Emilia Romagna was installed in the City Hall of Monghidoro (province of Bologna, Italy) in late September 2021 and citizens are getting familiar with the service.You can read the official Poste Italiane press release here:

Read press release

On the 2nd of December the local Community of Practice will meet for the 1st re-design workshop. Citizens’ representatives, representatives from the service provider Poste Italiane, ITL and the Major of Monghidoro will gather to discuss barriers and benefits of the service and collaboratively identify accessibility issues and assessed mitigations.

Stay tuned!

Read article by ITL in italian

The post Emilia-Romagna: video of launch event appeared first on Indimo Project.

Save the date! On 2 February the INDIMO and the SPROUT project will hold a joint webinar titled:

“Planning for a more inclusive transition of urban mobility.”

The webinar will bring both projects together to share their research results and explore synergies and possibilities on how the SPROUT pilot cities can make use of the INDIMO tools. The webinar will discuss the pilot use cases of Emilia-Romagna (INDIMO) and Valencia (SPROUT), both based on the installation of e-lockers, and see how they can benefit from each other by analyzing the key stakeholders involved, challenges, barriers, drivers, benefits, differences, and commonalities.

Agenda

Download Agenda

Register

For more information, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Daniel Herrera, Andréia Lopes Azevedo for INDIMO or Daniel Herrera for SPROUT.

The post INDIMO-SPROUT Webinar appeared first on Indimo Project.

The Poste Italiane digital locker foreseen by Pilot 1 – Emilia Romagna was installed in the City Hall of Monghidoro (province of Bologna, Italy) in late September 2021. The procedures to register and to get information about the locker are in place and some potential users have shown interest in the service. The official launching event is foreseen on October 27th where all citizens of Monghidoro were invited: there will be the possibility to learn more about INDIMO, the services of the Poste Italiane digital locker, and to register for the service.

Read article by ITL in italian

Watch the video

The post Digital Locker installed in Monghidoro appeared first on Indimo Project.

Have you ever seen a digital locker in a rural village? These days, you can access a lot of services just by connecting to the internet. Everything seems just a click away, especially if you live in a city or urban areas. There is great disparity, however, between urban areas (that is, cities) and rural areas (smaller villages). Within INDIMO, Poste Italiane (PI) and Fondazione Istituto Trasporti e Logistica (ITL) are working to bring more services related with digital mobility in Monghidoro, a small rural village in the metropolitan area of Bologna (Italy).

Take e-commerce as an example. Rural areas often suffer from not being very well-connected, so smaller villages do not enjoy the same level of service available elsewhere and at the same time, smaller villages often attract people with lower income (e.g. foreigners) and have a greater portion of elderly people living there, because many young people tend to move where more opportunities are available.

A digital locker in Monghidoro

To help overcome these challenges, we are working together with the Municipality of Monghidoro to install a digital locker. The digital locker will allow users to perform a number of operations in a much more convenient way, for example sending or receiving parcels, collecting signed correspondence, paying for their bills, recharging their SIM cards and prepaid proprietary cards Postepay) and manage the locker cell for personal purposes. Among the advantages that can be mentioned, users will reduce travel times for the withdrawal of objects optimizing the work-life balance, and speed up communications (e.g. the recipient of a package can access information relating to its shipment in real time).

Within INDIMO, we are introducing the digital locker to the entire population of Monghidoro (about 3700 residing people) and specifically to most vulnerable users such as elderly people and foreigners. In order to do so, we have first talked to them to understand their needs. In August-September 2020 we have carried out 15 interviews with stakeholders, elderly people and foreigners to investigate their thoughts and ideas on this type of service.

People living in rural areas often complain about the service level, not adequate internet connection and, also, the digital divide. This is especially true for elderly people, who are often not the focus of digital initiatives. Many elderly are not digitally skilled and they have different opinions on the locker. Some think that it could be hard for them to use, while others are quite thrilled about it and think that the digital locker can bring a positive change by introducing something new to town.

Remove the barriers

“I think that this a curious object [for an elderly person] and it could be like a game for people of my age. We will have to find some feat of memory to use it. New things put you to the test!” said one of the representative of the elderly community. – Signor Claudio (fictional name)

For sure, there will be support needed to introduce elderly people to the digital locker. Many respondents to our interviews have expressed an initial unfamiliarity with technology but also felt that, if this could help them saving time, it would be very good.

“Many people think that because I’m retired I have nothing to do all day. But it is not at all like that, I have many things to do!” – Signora Marinella (fictional name)

A lot of elderly people, in fact, are quite active and have many errands to complete. Elderly people make a good portion of the population of Monghidoro (29% are over 65 years old): despite not being familiar with technology, they have been introduced to apps to do some small things (e.g. videochats).

Foreigners, on the other hand, will probably appreciate the digital locker for the opportunity of having their own privacy, as they are already very well used to technology. Not all foreign people are the same, depending on their background and culture they can be very well-integrated with the community. Sometimes, however, they have problems understanding the language and the digital locker could provide a good alternative in case they do not feel comfortable going to crowded places.

The value of the digital locker lays in the fact that it will allow users to have an additional option to perform their errands and satisfy needs in terms of multi-channel, proximity and speed, thus favoring the development of demand and supply of innovative (digital) services. The locker also responds to the new need for social distancing and the process of change underway in daily habits, representing a concrete example of time saving services. Lastly, the locker favors a better environmental sustainability of e-commerce thanks to concentration of shipments in a single point with consequent optimization of logistics and reduction of CO2 emissions. Indirectly, it will also stimulate green  education for the correct disposal of packaging thanks to the separate waste collection system within the municipal disposal areas.

The pilot action of INDIMO in Monghidoro is wider than the digital locker itself. In fact, our aim is to involve the community and the stakeholders (Metropolitan City of Bologna, Emilia-Romagna region) to discuss some of the issues that rural areas are facing, trying to redesign assets for “small” smart-cities. This has been done thanks to the Community of Practice and much more will be done in the years ahead.

Visit Emilia-Romagna pilot

Follow the discussions hosted on the

ETM Forum

The post A digital locker in a rural village: the EMILIA-ROMAGNA pilot appeared first on Indimo Project.