My colleagues and I share a love for public transportation. Among us, we have experience of taking public transport in different cities and countries in various capacities. When I moved to Seattle for work, I depended on RapidRide (of King County Metro) to go to and from work every day. Occasionally, I would use their light rail to the bookstores and ferries for island hopping. I also relied on public transport when my family and I traveled in Asia, particularly in Singapore and Japan. We have experienced the joy of public transport in our own ways, but there also have been plenty of studies of the benefits (and their ancillaries) of well-designed public transportation systems, such as the reduction of traffic congestion, operational costs, travel times, ecological impact, public health, physical activity, and so on. (Buchanan, 2019; Rissel, et al., 2012; Zheng, 2008) In this blog, I will explore public transit by looking at the aesthetic journey.
But since the pandemic, I haven’t been using public transportation regularly. The direct and tactile connections with the world were greatly reduced. Perhaps coincidentally, the pandemic also seems to have accelerated and affirmed the abstracted quantitative and analytic measures in how we approach design and life. Recently, in rare instances where I encountered topics related to public spaces (including transportation) in conversation or informal presentation, I observed the tendency of the usage of the quantitative, e.g., using Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to track foot traffic in determining points of interests or using optimization models (for ‘stops’ and ‘routes’) to carry the maximum amount of people as possible. These are incredibly important works, however, I feel that in addressing human experiences, another crucial aspect, the aesthetics is ironically often anaesthetized.
Perhaps this is to be expected, given the culture of the design disciplines, where we tend to abide by the modernist creeds that put primacy of ‘functions following forms’ and ‘efficiency over careful deliberation’. But I think there is much to be explored in design in regards to the unquantifiable, like Edmund Burke’s idea of the sublime or Romain Rolland’s ‘oceanic feelings’ but perhaps more significantly is Simone Weil’s idea of attention — not on the fixation of problems, as she calls it “the wrong way of seeking.” Rather, attention to the point where the ‘self’ disappears into the “experience of the transcendent.” (Weil, 2000, pp. 231–6) As a new resident in Pittsburgh, Weil’s attention is what I try to practice while walking in Pittsburgh: Duquesne Heights, Mt. Washington, Mt. Lebanon, Lawrenceville, Strip District, Squirrel Hill, Downtown, and so on. Late last year, when the team at Harmonic put forward an idea of a service safari in qualitative research exploration for transit systems in different cities — I immediately jumped on board.
Constructing the Journey
Much of the qualitative research and service insights through the service safari has been excellently covered in the article ‘Exploring Transit Systems: Lessons from a Multi-City Service Safari,’ where we embarked on a “service safari, immersing ourselves in public transit systems across New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta.” As a service designer would, I naturally sketched out and outlined the journey of my experiences, starting with a moment map, following a standard passenger lifecycle (Learning about Public Transit, Becoming a New Rider, Riding Public Transport, and Transitioning to Irregular Rides). The service Safari toolkit was very helpful in focusing my attention on the everyday. And I think as a first-time rider, the experience really enhanced my attention. After constructing the skeleton of the journey hierarchy (phases, moments, steps, etc.) and populated details regarding pain points and gains throughout the journey, I quickly noticed a significant dip in the moments just before using public transit: the ‘walking’ and ‘waiting’ moments.
An outline of moment architecture and incomplete moment map that capture the journey of Riding Public Transport.
TheyDo journey management tool shows the journey of riding public transport.
I went back to my notes and pulled out one of the observations from my own service safari: I paid extra attention to the time it would take for me to walk from one stop to another. As a person who enjoys walking, contradictorily, I ensured that I chose the shortest possible walk for two reasons:
- A shorter transport ride in comparison to the walk feels costly
- Walking in most US cities feels laborious
After a bit of retrospection, I think I understood public transportation as mainly the usage of the transport itself. That means the value of the fare payment should be maximized in comparison to the part where I don’t (especially when connecting rides are free under a certain time limit). But as systems thinkers, my colleagues and I at Harmonic also discussed the infrastructural aspects of public transport in the rider’s holistic experiences as outlined in the service safari toolkit.
The Aesthetical Journey
Upon further reflection, I started to think beyond the ride itself and the means to the rides. Why do I enjoy some of the walks during public transportation more than others? One immediate juxtaposition to Pittsburgh that came to my mind was Japan. From what I can recall and impressed upon from my trips to Japan, I always like walking in their cities. And I think it is largely influenced by the cities’ aesthetics. For example, I observed that cities in Japan integrate the natural landscape very well with urban design. One of the areas where I stayed is close to the river (Aibiki River in Takamatsu), where the city takes advantage of the ‘blue space’ where pedestrians access to it is very accessible, walkable, and preferable (because it’s beautiful). Such environmental preferences might be influenced by not only physical quality, such as safety support and water conditions etc., but also the unquantifiable aesthetic quality, such as harmony and mystery. (Luo, et. al, 2023)
However, when we delve into aesthetics, we should not confine purely of the senses in relation to human physiological constitutions. We should, at the same time, appeal to the senses in relation to culture. Walter Gropius once asserted that “in Japan… the cultural strata of over a thousand years reaches more clearly into present-day life than in other countries”, and to understand the architecture of a nation, one has to have “an inside knowledge of their way of thinking and their philosophy.” (Gropius & Gropius, 1968, pp.111–4) I do not know to what extent the culture of Japan has changed since the time of his writing, but the beauty of its architecture and urban design is very much present. Aside from the green and blue spaces that are optimally utilized, I see beautiful details on artifacts that might not feel significant, for example, from the modern style of the painted road markings in demarcating areas for various actors to the beautiful ‘embroidery’ carved on the manhole covers that are unique for each region. What is more amazing is that while the design in certain areas of the city conforms more to the traditional while others conform to the modern, they never feel conflicting. Perhaps there’s a strong cultural connection between the two opposing themes, but I think this is what Gropius meant by unity in diversity. The scrutiny paid to the most minute details shows care and respect. And when people commit to ‘attention’, the aesthetic rewards will be very well paid off.
But, of course, the care and respect in design put into the details extends to the public transport systems as well. Every station, bus, and train that I have had the privilege to visit was beautiful, well-organized, and incredibly clean. The culture of Japan permeates in their aesthetics beyond the physical. They are also manifested in their services and ecosystems. The process of a rider’s journey is not only simple but also delightful. For example, at each major station in Japan, passengers can collect an emblem specific to the station stamped onto a journal or booklet. The train schedules are exceptionally punctual. And the customer service consistently, from all that I’ve been exposed to from various countries, is the best I’ve ever experienced, bar none.
The process of a rider’s journey is not only simple but also delightful.
But there is a challenge, especially in North America and in this highly capitalistic era, to preserve cultures. Gropius pointed out that with the rise of modern industrial society and the introduction of mechanization, much of the beauty of the cities is being replaced by “commercial exploitation,” that “patterns of taste dictated by purely commercial considerations”, and as a result “the natural feeling for quality and appropriateness is dissipated in the giddy tumble from novelty to novelty.” (Ibid., p. 22)
From what I have observed, in many parts of North American cities, I feel that there’s a “losing struggle against conformity imposed by mass production. “ (Ibid., p. 22) Many cities in North America are very car-centric. As a result, many of the spaces are occupied by automobiles instead of people. As we’ve outlined, public transportation is associated with walking. (Rissel, et. al., 2012) And through walking, we are connected more directly to our surroundings — diffusing and dissolving our ‘self’ into the world — thus making the ‘experience of the transcendent’ more plausible, i.e., of attention. (Weil, 2000)
When we use the car, by comparison, our walking is hugely minimized and along with it our exposure to the world. If it is the case that cars take dominance in our cities, where lies the need for the aesthetics to be appreciated? Our attention is taken up by our driving and urgency to get to our destinations. And more of such behavior is reflected in the aesthetics (or lack thereof) of the cities.
The Soul of the City: The Yinzers
But what does it all matter? For service designers, it is always fundamentally about the people. Meaningful and effective service design work has to be approached contextually. And, here I found the robustness and adaptability of service design. Here, I will try to outline a very rough sketch of how using a service design framework, we can adopt an even more humanistic paradigm towards designing for the people.
I think there’s some truth to what Wittgenstein once formulated, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” (Wittgenstein et al., 2001, p. 68)(5.6.) However, instead of adopting his ontological solipsism, I want to approach it from a critical realist epistemology theory-ladenness in our language. In applying that philosophy in service design, changing the language of our journeys means we also change the paradigms of how we approach design. For example, [Planning My Route] is a pragmatic and functionalist approach. The idea is to complete a task with as little effort as possible. Alternatively, [Studying My Path] is a more deliberate approach, where people are asked to put effort into understanding their journey. From a critical realist perspective, we wouldn’t just take the world as a given and design within it. Rather, we ask, “What does the world need to be like in order for people to be able to ‘study their paths’ more meaningfully?” In ‘studying the path’, people would not merely be [Preparing]. Rather, we’d be designing the conditions making it possible for people to [Explore]. In other words, in order for people to truly experience the aesthetics, to be attentive, and to discover all the beautiful details in the world, we shift the paradigm from ‘Jobs-to-be-Done’ into ‘State-of-Being’.
I understand that what I outlined does not exactly fit into the current reality we live in today. However, I often ask myself: ‘But is this current reality the best we can do?’ Isn’t there an urgent task for designers to preserve humanism in our design? Just like how Gropius would encourage us to shift “the emphasis from “bigger” to “better”, from the quantitative to the qualitative, and to give significant form and beauty to our environment”, (Gropius & Gropius, 1968, p. 24) so too for us to shift our approach from “design for efficiency” to “design for life”. Many areas in the cities of North America, in Pittsburgh for example, have been claimed by the monotony of car-centric ‘commercial exploitation’ — thus, the aesthetics of disinterested homogeneity. And, by the time of this writing, PRT (Pittsburgh Regional Transit) just proposed massive budget cuts that will impact not only people who are heavily reliant on public transit, where “180,000 residents and 50,000 jobs would lose access to”, but also heavily impact people with disabilities as well; “Paratransit is a lifeline, and to shrink it by the proposed 62% would be a massive blow.” (Smeltz, 2025; Claire, 2025)
This is very unfortunate. By not investing in public transport (and the city as a whole), not only will many people be affected. It is not just about getting people from one point to another, but it’s also about all the aesthetics in between — including the yinzers. During my service safari, I brushed shoulders with people walking on the sidewalk. A passenger yelled out, “My stop!”. In busy areas, I see people talking aloud on their cell phones. One talking in a foreign language for all to hear. While resting in a quiet peace, I heard the scraping of the soles against the pavement by some and small hammering ‘clicks’ by others. On the stops on my way home, I saw a mom guiding her toddler reaching out to the dad as he got off the bus. A tired worker walking hunched over, dragging his feet. A man with flowers waiting for a woman at the ‘Park and Ride’. At the end of my journey, I was the last person on the bus. And, before I got off, the bus driver said, “See you around, brother.” Their charm. Their friendliness. Their cheerful boisterousness. Their kindness. These are the aesthetic cultures that are worth fostering. And it can be amplified by designing in consideration of the city’s aesthetics. Pittsburgh, after all, is beautiful. And it is worth preserving.
References
Buchanan, M. (2019). The benefits of public transport. Nature Physics, 15(9), 876-876.
Burke, E. (2009). A philosophical enquiry into the sublime and beautiful. Routledge.
Clair. (2025, March 24). PRT, the State Budget, and Major Service Cuts-What’s Going On? – Pittsburghers for Public Transit. Pittsburghers for Public Transit. https://www.pittsburghforpublictransit.org/prt-the-state-budget-and-major-service-cuts-whats-going-on/
Freud, S. (2015). Civilization and its discontents. Broadview Press.
Gropius, W., & Gropius, I. (1968). Apollo in the democracy: The cultural obligation of the architect.
Luo, S., Xie, J., & Furuya, K. (2023). Effects of perceived physical and aesthetic quality of urban blue spaces on user preferences–A case study of three urban blue spaces in Japan. Heliyon, 9(4).
Rissel, C., Curac, N., Greenaway, M., & Bauman, A. (2012). Physical activity associated with public transport use—a review and modelling of potential benefits. International journal of environmental research and public health, 9(7), 2454-2478.
Parsons, W. B. (1999). The enigma of the oceanic feeling: Revisioning the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism. Oxford University Press.
Smeltz, A. (2025, March 17). PRT to float steep cuts to Allegheny County bus and T service, fare hikes. PublicSource.
Weil, S. (2000). Simone Weil, an anthology. Grove Press.
Wittgenstein, L., Pears, D., & Mcguinness, B. (2001). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Routledge.
Zheng, Y. (2008). The benefit of public transportation: physical activity to reduce obesity and ecological footprint. Preventive medicine, 46(1), 4-5.
