For a better mobility as a service in Ljubljana
Engineers and anthropologists can, and do, click
Robert Podlipnik, a 7+1 team representative, and developer at the Endava’s department in Ljubljana, has joined the Active8 Planet project together with two other developers. Active8-Planet project was created with a purpose of a collaboration between students and larger companies, to learn and experiment with planet-centred approach in research and development. In the case of the Slovenian team, the project connected a software company Endava, team leaders from the Institute for Innovation and Development of University of Ljubljana and four students from Department for ethnology and cultural anthropology of the University of Ljubljana. Robert’s team at the Endava was tasked with the goal of finding out what more can they do for their customers and what people really need in the city of Ljubljana. He explains about his team: “So when we saw the project, we said: Let’s try to combine this engineering point of view with an anthropological one and this is how it started.”
When Anuša asked Robert the initial question, he thought for a short second and then replied: “First there was some scepticism about how we will collaborate, will we get anything productive out of this? Us, engineers, and tech workers, are used to very fast-paced environments and quick solutions,” as opposed to the timeline of anthropological work, which often demands literature reading, interviews, and participant-observation over the span of multiple months.
Our team could feel this initial tug for creating quick and measurable results at the beginning of October 2021, but the process simply did not allow this. We set out to create in-depth research and not limit ourselves to end solutions before we have insights from the field and Ljubljana citizens. Robert mentioned in the conversation that the biggest gap between the two fields is the tempo of work and expectation for results.
The Endava team was burdened with justifying the project as profitable to the corporation, but Robert has assured that: “Luckily the team is genuinely agile, so we were all in and determined to get something positive out of this,” which has tremendously aided the team dynamic and consequently influenced the results.
We are dealing with the stories of people
In the conversation, they touched upon the process of the collaboration and Robert shared that: “At the beginning, there was a little bit of frustration, when it turned out that it will take a few months before we get insights, let alone results. And then, somewhere along the line, I sat down with one of the anthropologists I’m closer to and he opened my eyes to the anthropological world. That is when the click happened: We aren’t creating a new feature or a new functionality on an app. We are dealing with the stories of people, how they live and most importantly why do they live the way they do. What are they using, why they are using it and how it fits into their lives. When I saw that this research is going into depth instead of the mass of information, the 20 interviews, we were planning, gained a whole new context. And these produced valuable results and insights.” Robert described the lessons and results of this year’s work in these words: “We have now shaped specific insights, which I think are the added value of this project. With these we will understand the users and their lives better and more in depth. For the next year, I hope that we can transform the insights into something even more tangible and improve our services.”
And lastly about the value for the developers themselves: “The lesson is not to jump too quickly into the process of creating and developing but take the time to step back and consider why we are doing what we are doing and what does it already mean for the end user. This is where I really see the added value, in the slowing down of the process, which takes time and does not immediately produce measurable results.”
Both engineers and anthropologists learned a lot from one another on this project. The willingness to stay open and collaborate helped the Active8-Planet team members to create a project for the people of Ljubljana and their everyday lives. With a combination of corporate, and academic resources and knowledge, we continue to offer valuable insights about the way people in Ljubljana use public and private transportation and how they can, together with transportation providers, create a more spacious, cleaner, and tranquil city.
The interview was firstly published in the Why The World Needs Anthropologists 2022 Official Magazine, which can be found following this link.