The first day at the University of Amsterdam. The classroom is busy with people shuffling around since we had just found out what our teams were. The air is filled with excitement, especially on our part since we all were excited to see which Dutch students would be on our team. By the time the dust had settled, I was with my team which turned out to be only 2 students out of six. The others you may ask? One didn’t bother showing up, the other was working a full time internship, another was sick, and the last was on holiday in Spain. Ok, no worries I thought and tried to get to know my teammates who did show up. One was named “distinguished” Rob because he always wore a suit or dressed up (for no particular reason I think). The other was a Lithuanian guy named Joris (but pronounced “Yaris”). I decided they would have to do and we began tackling our design problem: “How to improve public transit for tourists visiting Amsterdam?”
We brainstormed some ideas and examined some trends in the area, something called noticing. We discovered that the city of Amsterdam is experiencing over tourism and had introduced a cap of 20 million tourists per year being allowed to visit. Additionally Amsterdam has a wide variety of options ranging from buses to trams to trains to ferries that all get pretty crowded. However, unlike Houston, they all run on time, efficiently, and you are not taking your life in your hands to ride them (Houston metro commuters will know what I am talking about…). So how can you improve something is already perfect?
Well, that was precisely the reason why I decided to take this course. I am very interested in mobility and wanted to learn how it is run in a place as perfect as Amsterdam, where a metro train runs every 5 minutes and is literally spotless. Part of our work was to conduct interviews in the field to understand what our target audience (tourists) thought of the experience and to gain data. Us Rice kids had a little practice first by ourselves by saying hello to every single stranger we saw on the street before working up to having a conversation with a random person about a random object (in my case asking a café owner about the name of their shop and what it meant, it was called Double D (in Dutch) and meant double good, and when she said that she pointed to the menu saying everything was good on there). I also had experience myself since I have taken Hesam’s Disco class and another Lillie course, tech prod. Management, but my teammates did not have the same experience and were very nervous. Their nervousness was not unfounded, since Dutch people are usually more reserved and don’t take kindly to random people stopping them in the street to ask them things. However, since we had to interview tourists we skipped out on that and found hospitable American or British tourists who thought it was wholesome that some students wanted to ask them some questions. I also stopped a random German couple who gave me the most evil stare and told me that they “don’t answer questions and Goodbye.” This was quite the culture shock for me since I was used to chatty Americans who would yap for hours if you would let them, but it was a crucial learning aspect since not everyone is hospitable and you have to learn from rejection.
Still the interviewing was a crucial learning component for me and every interview I did helped me grow a little as a person. At the end of our interviews, we pulled together as a team to understand if there was a solution for our problem that we would present in class. Here we hit an issue since most of our research findings showed physical tickets to be the biggest issue for tourists, but conveniently Amsterdam joined the growing list (700+ at this point) of cities that uses tap with your card or digital wallet directly at the gate or bus to ride. This removes a huge barrier of having to find ticket machines, wait in line, try to understand what ticket you need to purchase, have it be broken at the end, or buy the wrong ticket, and etc. Instead, now all you have to do is just tap your phone at the gate to get inside and just ride for however long you need and just tap out when you are finished. Even the suburban trains use this system, meaning you can ride to Rotterdam or The Hague (like we did) just using your phone. So unfortunately there wasn’t much room for improvement since the issue was pretty much solved, but I did not have to worry about that since Rice’s focus in that class didn’t go as deep. This was a very important learning aspect as well part of the sensing and experimenting component of the class, and sometimes a problem you think exists, may not, or may be in an entirely different area. We went back to our interview spots after this finding and did some more interviews, except this time with officials to understand what they thought of the problem. Many of them agreed that this was something that city was working on and it being implemented finally will help a lot for their day-to-day, especially the customer service reps. A few of them told us that Amsterdam to the locals is feeling more foreign than Dutch, and that when they are on their day off and visit the city and order a coffee, sit in a restaurant, or go to a store, all the waiters or employees will start talking to them in English versus Dutch, since they know that the majority who visit are tourists. It got so bad that some locals are creating areas in Amsterdam only for Dutch people.
This was an interesting finding for us, but time will have to tell for what will happen. Perhaps the next group will discover an answer…
Despite this, I had an incredible time in Amsterdam with my highlight visiting Gazelle, the oldest and largest bicycle company in the Netherlands. We got to get a presentation on a secret soon-to-be released model, toured their factory, had lunch, and even got to go on a group ride through the largest national forest in the Netherlands. We even stopped for ice cream! All of that was because of a cold email that I sent out, so you never know what can happen.
For people visiting Amsterdam, I have two recommendations:
The first is to avoid the main tourist areas and museums. Sure, go walk there and discover the area, but I had more fun in the residential areas outside the main tourist district, although most of Amsterdam is touristy… Two highlights for museums is the Kitten Cabinet, a house museum that belongs to someone who collects art depicting cats (including a Rembrandt) and features cats strolling the place. The second was Het Schip, The Ship, but not a literal ship, rather it is home to the Amsterdam school and is housed in The Ship, a futuristic housing project designed by Michel de Klerk. It was built as a modern concept for the working class in the 1920s and has some really cool architecture features including a fully furnished post office, apartment, and museum. The neighborhood its in features a few other projects built by de Klerk and some other 1900s designs and showcases a former working class Amsterdam.
The second is to explore outside of Amsterdam a little. One way is by bike, which I think is a mandatory experience for everyone visiting the city. It is such an incredible feeling to ride in the city which treats bicyclists with respect, with massive dedicated cycling lanes, stop lights, and you don’t have to yield for pedestrians (I could be wrong, but they don’t stop if you cross without a light…). With a bike you can explore the entire city in around 20ish minutes and it is so much fun to ride around with literally thousands of other cyclists; it feels like a never ending group ride. Also, go explore the other Dutch cities! My group fell in love with Rotterdam with its modern and clean architecture (has the largest port in Europe and great ship museum) and Den Hague, which is a cool town with a massive beach and boardwalk that is great to check out!