Conception of a digital mobility platform for citizens in rural areas

For many senior citizens living in rural areas, participation in daily activities, political affairs and cultural events is determined by the available mobility options to get to such activities. To support these citizens in their everyday life, an intelligent "Mobility-as-a-Service" (MaaS) application shall be conceptualized and implemented, which matches mobility offers of volunteer drivers, public transportation and taxi services with the mobility needs of the senior citizens. This paper introduces to the conception and design of a digital mobility platform for senior citizens in cooperation with an administrative district and six of its municipalities in Germany. Senior citizens are involved in the different phases of the development of a mobility solution through a co-creation approach and are significantly involved in the design and testing of the application. In this paper, we introduce the design phase of the development and present the results from five workshops that we conducted together with 57 seniors. During the workshops, the developed usage scenarios and mock-ups of the mobility application were evaluated by the participants. Based on the feedback and insights gathered from the users in the workshops, recommendations for the further implementation of the mobility app were given.