Mobility Data Stories for a Better Understanding of Mobility Data

Abstract

Numerous stakeholders are involved in mobility planning, such as citizens’ initiatives, political decision-makers, and mobility consultants. Here, data and its linkage form an important building block for decision-making. However, the challenge is to process heterogeneous data sources in a problem-adequate and target group-specific manner. Therefore, this publication addresses how decision-relevant contexts can be visualized and developed into mobility data stories. First, the approaches and principles of Neifer, Freytag, and Field are presented. They show that data stories are formed from an intersection of the key components data, visualizations, and stories. After that, an example is used to show how Mobility Data Stories are developed, starting from the core question, through the selection of data, the conception of the story, to the visualization. The sample solution developed in the research process is then evaluated regarding usability and user experience with the stakeholders. Based on the evaluation results, a method for creating target-group-specific Mobility Data Stories is derived to support the stakeholders in the mobility sector with the visual and content-related preparation of the data. Further, the target-oriented mobility planning process is structured regarding the potential of mobility data stories. Finally, general guidelines for creating target-group-specific Mobility Data Stories are derived. The results show the potential of Mobility Data Stories.