Resulting from the extensive work of the MIND-SETS team, two parts of a new MIND-SETS approach have emerged, which are embedded within the MSKC:

The MSKC is an intelligence facility to enable policy-makers, planners, researchers, or the innovators of new mobility products and services to better understand mobility and the role it plays in peoples’ lives. It provides this knowledge in a variety of ways – through intelligence ‘Insights’, expert ‘Editorials’, videos and recorded conference presentations, a virtual library of source material, discussion forums and links to professional social media channels, and a ‘Radar Tool’ through which individuals and the innovators of new mobility products and services can use to identify their ‘Mobility Footprint’ and the degree to which it conforms with the mobility values of different generations – for example the ‘Baby Boomers’ or ‘Millennials’.

Stakeholders can both benefit from using the MSKC’s intelligence bank, and to actively engage and contribute their knowledge and experience into the MSKC, to contribute to enhancing our understanding of mobility.

Many types of stakeholders will find the knowledge provided by the MSKC a useful contribution to their work – those engaged in policy-making, planners and transport operators, researchers; and those developing or modifying mobility products and services. It is not only of use to those directly engaged in the transport field. There are many disciplines and related sectors that have contributed to the intelligence within the MSKC, and, in turn, practitioners from these areas can benefit from the wider focus that the MSKC can bring to their subject. The MSKC focuses on mobility in its widest context. Therefore it includes all forms of travel, including virtual mobility on the Internet. It includes the range from local mobility to international mobility. It also includes mobility as a possession or service that you may not necessarily use. It includes the importance of mobility both in your mind-set and in your lifestyle.

The intelligence contained within the MSKC is based on a powerful new approach to understanding the role of mobility in peoples’ lives. It is a practical intelligence source that is of value to many groups of stakeholders in the transport and mobility–related fields.

The ambition for the MSKC is to make it a ‘one-stop-shop’ for acquiring intelligence on understanding mobility Worldwide. To be a knowledge centre that is dynamic, constantly taking on board new intelligence from a diverse range of research disciplines and professional practice, learning from the experience of its users, engaging them, creating positive discussion and building new knowledge from old knowledge. In this way, the MSKC will always remain at the forefront of its field.

The MIND-SETS team have defined four quadrants of mobility behaviour, reflecting ‘4 Ss’  – Social, Safe, Smart and Sustainable. Each quadrant contains two Mobility Roots, 8 in total. These roots, as a set, define a person’s mobility values – for example are they possessive or collaborative, do they prefer things personalised or do they share, do they insist on retaining control of their mobility or are they happy for automated systems to make decisions for them? These 8 roots are defined within the MSKC as a radar diagram. The graphical plot of a person’s scores against the 8 roots defines their Mobility Footprint – their mobility DNA.

The ‘Mobility Footprint’ is the latent root or DNA of a person’s mobility values. Conversely, a ‘Mobility Footprint’ can be defined for a particular mobility product or service – that is, the features that are designed to appeal to different sections of society/the anticipated market – what mobility values will they hope to attract.

A Mobility footprint will visually appear as a radar diagram. This will then allow you to compare your footprint, or that of other individuals, groups of people, or mobility products and services, against the normative footprints measured for different generations of people – Baby Boomers, Millennials, the youngest ‘Digital Aboriginals’ and so on – how typical are your mobility values, those of your peer group, or the characteristics of a novel mobility product.

The radar tool makes an automatic comparative analysis of these footprints to show visually how individuals and group footprints match those of different generations; and how far the footprint of mobility products and services meet their intended market – for example, which roots the product succeeds in satisfying and which ones it fails to address (and which other generations may it attract). The comparison provides a percentage value of the overall ‘fit’ initially against your generation, and then against the footprints of other generations.

Additionally, the analysis shows which of the 8-mobility roots show the greatest convergence or diversity. This is particularly valuable for those innovating new products and services to see how designs could be fine-tuned to better-fit generational markets.

The results of the Mobility Footprint analysis are provided as an output file. The the results will then be used to guide you to further intelligence within the MSKC, in the form of Insights, Editorials, source material and so on, customised to the specific issues raised by the Footprint analysis. You will be able to record the results of your assessment in the MSKC and to provide comment on the insights you have gained.

The MIND-SETS roots are developed from 2 perspectives:

How a person judges their beliefs, values and behaviour, relating to their mobility, by scoring a value on each the 8 mobility roots that have been defined for them – graphically presented on a radar diagram, this is defined as an Individual’s Mobility Footprint

How the provider of a mobility product and service assesses the characteristics of their product, system or service, also by scoring a value on each the 8 mobility roots that have been defined for them– graphically presented on a radar diagram, this is defined as the Product or Service Mobility Footprint