We’ve asked our #DataImpactFellows to write a post on the theme of ‘change’.
Stuart Campbell reflects on the challenges and opportunities that the current crisis presents for the ways we work.
I keep thinking of this 2017 paper on commuting and ‘forced experimentation’.
The authors examine the effect of qatar rcs data tube strikes on people’s commutes to work in London. They show that when strikes forced commuters to take different routes to work, many people stuck with these new routes after the strikes were finished. That is, being forced to try a different way of doing things in the short-term, people found better ways to do things in the long run. We know that commuting time affects people’s wellbeing, so such forced experimentation in routes has the potential to do some good.
The authors also show that the persistent effect of the strikes on people’s commutes was more powerful in areas of London where the tube map is more geographically distorted. These distortions make some routes appear to be shorter or longer on the map than they are on the ground. This suggests that many of the people who found better routes to work had likely been misled by the design of the tube map, and only found a quicker or more efficient route once they had been forced to try out new ways themselves.
These results may be informative for people who commute on the tube in London, but they also speak to a bigger idea – that in a world where we don’t have time or energy to find out the best way to do everything, being forced to try different approaches might help us make better choices in the long run.