[Jaclyn Youngblood from the Lab at MassDOT is standing in-front of a conference exhibit as the narrator with video footage walking through the space showing a large garbage truck, people using virtual reality googles, and a person in a wheelchair with a volunteer guide]
Welcome to Empathy at the Intersection. This is MassDOT’s exhibit about inviting planners, engineers, and designers to step into someone else's perspective. To really think about how the decisions that we make as leaders in the transportation profession as practitioners, how those decisions really land in people's bodies and how people move throughout the space of the streets that we are designing. We have a series of experiential activities that folks can participate in as they wish.
Our first activity is a bus operator simulation. It asks you to do the activities that a bus operator does in their day to day. Behind that, we have our truck blind zone work based on some research that MassDOT did with USDOT Volpe on truck visibility. The experiential activity is to get into the cab of the truck and see what you can see in the crosswalk and in the bike lane and then transition over to the second truck and compare the visibility out of that cab design.
Moving into the back corner of the space, we have our virtual driving simulation that checks out three different types of vulnerable road users, people on motorcycles, people on bicycles, and people walking and then our final two activities are more sort of navigational exercise asking you to engage with different mobility assistive devices or experiencing different mobility impairments the first set of activities are putting on a suit, one is an aging suit and one is a pregnancy suit.
And then the final set of activities is done in partnership with our colleagues at Connecticut DOT. It's their ADA tool kit experience, so they have some different types of vision impairment goggles, as well as a white cane so you navigate different parts of the street in that scenario and then some wheelchair-based activities.
There are reflection boards for each activity they are loosely constructed as empathy maps and so we're asking you to reflect on how did the activity make you feel? What did you think about the activity? What would you want to do or do differently now that you've experienced the activity? What would you say to someone else about the activity? So you can jot down your thoughts put it up on a post-it note, stick it up on the wall.
You're welcome to do as much or as little as you'd like, and we hope that you enjoy empathy at the intersection
[Closing logo of the Lab at MassDOT]