Laura Aston is a PhD candidate, undertaking research focused on measuring the transit ridership performance of the built environment.

In this interview, David Brown has a chat to Laura about her career, motivations and thoughts on how we need to more actively embrace new thinking in our transport planning processes. Some reflections from the interview are below are documented below.

She has a Bachelor of Environmental Engineering/Bachelor of Arts from Monash University.

She said about Environmental Engineering “It’s about as multidisciplinary as engineering gets”. She admitted that those who take on Environmental Engineering were probably a little more radical than the typical engineering student. But the degree itself was anything but radical. She did, however, appreciate the background and rigour of some of the engineering subjects.

Her leadership of the Student Leadership Summit was a huge commitment to a principle of giving undergraduate students the chance to be excited and invigorated with the wide world that they will participate in.

When speaking about single vehicle occupant cars, she talked of the inequity to the whole community. “Inequity” is a concept that is starting to show up in a range of statistics most recently on the average life expectancy rates. Transport planners have a role to play in this key community measure.

Her research confirms that diversity can mean that people react in different ways in different countries so that the context is immensely important in the culture of a city and it differs hugely.

Her research group is as follows:

Sustainable and Effective Public Transport Graduate Industry Research Program (SEPT-GRIP)

Public Transport Research Group

Monash Institute of Transport Studies

http://publictransportresearchgroup.info

Public transport patterns in a country like the Netherlands are quite different from say the United States.

Does this mean that she is starting to understand the Australian psyche? She said:

“What I am learning from my job which is a part time role in the User Focused Design Branch in the Victorian Government, is from the human centred design perspective, not only is the context of a country important but the context of a neighbourhood is important. So it's really hard to generalise and say the Australian psyche is one particular thing. To get the optimum outcome, you'd have to treat every instance, every new build (for example a train station or a level crossing removal), as a unique context and understand the local psyche to really design for the best outcome.

“And that's an exciting overlay that this new service design thinking approach brings to transport planning.

So what sort of things does Service Design encompass?

“Well traditionally human centred design has applied to consumables consumer products but in the last few years we've adapted human centred designed to service planning. Now if you think of the Apple iPhone that is one of the most memorable and I'll probably be told off for using this example but it's the most noteworthy example of where someone incredibly visionary, namely Steve Jobs, saw that you couldn't have a bestselling product unless you not only have the functional product but you make it irresistible to use.

And so Apple focused on the user experience of the smartphone.

Now we're applying that notion to service design and to transport planning to make sure that our transport services meet the needs of users

Was being the motivator and leader of the Student Leadership Summit a practical exercise in management?

Absolutely practical in the sense that it was “applied” yes! Practical in the sense that I didn't bite off more than I could chew – No! (Laughs)

In the interview Laura did reveal a little of her much greater dreams, (you’ll have to listen to find out) but she has a firm grip on her present reality, nonetheless we are sure the future holds many exciting developments.