Evolving the Digital Experience of Transportation -
A Manifesto

Tell me, I’ll forget…
Show me, I’ll remember…
Involve me, I’ll understand.
Chinese Proverb

Fellow members of the transportation industry, as we seek to improve the mobility in our communities we must aspire to connect with our audiences on a deeper level. On a level that considers and understands those audiences and seeks to more greatly involve them at each stage of each project. This can only be accomplished by increasing and evolving the quality of our online engagements.

The following core principles are presented as a roadmap for achieving this mission of deeper connection and engagement.

We must acknowledge that our audiences have changed.

The days of standalone, single-channel, town hall meetings are over. We must acknowledge that our communities are younger, technologically-savvy, communicate in new ways, and are more actively willing to provide feedback - both good and bad - during all hours of the day and night. We must accept this and be willing to modify our communication methods to capture the audiences where they are most active and most willing to participate. This place is online.

We must be brave and embrace the new.

We understand that many fear technology. Many fear the unknown. Many fear change...but we do not. We will be courageous, consider how digital can bring new ideas to both the industry and the communities, and acknowledge that innovation can only truly be acquired through the exploration of the new.

We must diagnose before we prescribe.

With each project comes unique challenges and dependencies. As such, our work is too important and our mission is too critical to rely on cookie-cutter and productized solutions. For our web and mobile projects, we will rely on trusted digital partners who will properly diagnose our needs and present qualified options based on their experience and discoveries. Only with this guide can we provide a guaranteed, strategic plan, and a clutter-free experience.

We must create approachable and inspiring experiences.

The quality of the information we provide to the public, in both subject matter and presentation, is a direct reflection of our thoughtfulness and dedication to each project and its outcomes. We will consider our audiences and build experiences that work for them. The words we use will be clear and concise, yet approachable. The visual presentation we select will be appropriate, professional, and inspire engagement. In aggregate, the collective experience will be one that elevates our work and the industry as a whole.

We must develop clutter-free systems.

Once we have diagnosed the situation and selected a focused path forward, we must seek to build the most streamlined and elegant system possible to empower our project and constituent needs. We understand that this investment will require more strategic thinking and we appreciate that when executed correctly a clutter-free system is faster, is more nimble, scalable, more secure and will increase the integrity and adoption of the information we present.

We must push for automation, but not at the expense of personal connections.

With a greater adoption of web and mobile technologies comes an amazing opportunity to automate the systems we use to create our experiences. We will embrace this automation and deploy them where pragmatically appropriate. We will, however, be cautious of any haphazard adoption that could dilute our relationship with our audiences or decrease the authentic connections we aspire to build and nurture.

We will measure our work.

In order to understand where we have succeeded and where improvements should be considered, we must always measure the effectiveness of our work. These metrics should be intentional and planned from the beginning for only once we take pause to assess a project’s success, both honestly and humbly, can we begin to plan a path forward towards future innovation.

We will begin now.

We must immediately leave our historic and legacy approaches behind. They will be our guide to avoid past mistakes and be the platform upon which we build, however, they will not be a crutch or safe place where we hide or neglect what we know to be a better path forward. The evolution begins today.

Today we embark on this mission. Today we take the first step. Today and henceforth, we will champion these principles and trailblaze the path forward to forge deeper, quality online engagements.