Marcus Thomas

Casey is a hybrid digital-physical experience where you can access a mobility assistant that uses advanced robotics and intuitive design to provide seamless, on-demand support.

Although Mid-City, Santa Monica residents live in a walkability oasis, we learned that the majority of them preferred using a car to get around. This lead us to the problem statement - "How might we make the "first/last mile" experience more engaging and spontaneous for Mid-City, Santa Monica locals, so that they can drive less and walk more?"

Through our research, the team discovered some very interesting statistics regarding the way people approach transportation and mobility in the area. Of particular note is the fact that Mid-City, Santa Monica has a Walkability Score of 92. This score is used by civic planners, real estate companies, and even universities, in order to find out whether a city can be considered a 15-minute city. Amenities are aplenty and well within a short walking distance, and yet, according to surveys submitted by residents, only 10% of residents walk or bike as their preferred method of transportation. While looking at this small number, we started asking who are these people in the first place. Pretty much immediately, we thought of - the elderly and people with physical disabilities. When looking at the most recent US Census for the area, we found out that 18.8% of Mid-City, Santa Monica residents are over the age of 65. With these insights in mind, we had our sights set on developing a concept that can accommodate and is, more importantly, user friendly for the fringes of our the local population. This ethos was reinforced on a trip to BMW Designworks, where they stated on their own most recent mobility project that, "If it works for the fringes, then it will work for everyone."‍ Another thing that struck us was that, if we were to create a project that would help residents with mobility and transportation (and in result, get them walking more), we needed some sort of physical component to this project to help them navigate the city. To better understand this, we looked at precedence regarding Micro Mobility and Automated Utility. Santa Monica as a whole is no stranger to newly introduced tech, so we wondered how communities used and perceived, these two technologies in the area. There were some extreme examples of poor community reception (ie. Lime e-scooters' abrupt rollout in 2018), positive community reception (ie. Veo e-bikes and e-scooters, and their slower rollout), and plenty of grey (ie. Waymo and their years long regulation and tech battle to finally get approved for testing, as well as their strong positive publicity push) to gather info on how to win over the community. We also looked at other use cases for these technologies in geo-fenced areas, like delivery robots on college campuses and airport luggage robots to better focus our efforts on not trying to create an "everything" robot, but something with a stated goal that was relevant to our users. Bearing this in mind, the team didn't just want the solution to help people understand where they are going, but offer them a helping hand to their destination.

Casey addresses the challenge of encouraging Mid-City, Santa Monica residents to walk more in a way that feels natural, supportive, and engaging. Rooted in the insight that walkability isn’t just about infrastructure but also accessibility and agency, Casey combines a digital app with a physical mobility assistant to make the “first/last mile” experience seamless. This solution focuses on the real needs of the community, starting with those often overlooked in design: older adults and people with physical disabilities. By doing so, we were able to create our guiding principles of Usability, Delight, and Freedom of Movement. These principles led us to designing a product that is intuitive and accessible for everyone, sparks joy through small moments of interaction, and empowers users to navigate their city on their own terms.