State-of-the-art analysis

For my SOTA research, I decided to take a closer look at the online material currently available for parents traveling with their strollers on SL busses in Stockholm.

A quick round of google searches shows that a lot of the material comes from second-hand sources, like blogs and online forums (familjeliv.se being a major hub of discussion for these topics). The official material is limited to a subparagraph on the SL website, explaining that parents with strollers travel for free. There is no material on the website telling parents what to think about when traveling with strollers, or how they should plan their trips.

That information is instead found on other websites, and parents can find a plethora of blog posts and forum threads detailing every aspect of bringing your stroller on the bus. This will of course require them to know where (and how) to find this information in the first place.

The material found on forums, such as familjeliv.se, varies greatly in nature and ranges from retellings of personal experiences and nervous questions from first-time parents, to complaints from other travellers and input from actual bus drivers. Traversing the website can feel tedious and confusing, and not all threads will contain the information you are looking for as a parent. However, anything you would be interested in knowing should be there already, and if you have an account you always have the option of asking the questions yourself.

The material that can be found on blogs differ slightly, as the blog posts tend to be more instructional and formal (see http://www.barnvagnsblogg.com/att-aka-kollektivt-med-barnvagn/). They are often directed to first-time parents that are unsure about proper conduct and questions of safety.

A potential (partial) solution for our project could be to summarize the advice in these (often quite disorganised and sprawling) forum threads and blog posts. We could then order the advice in an easy-to-read format and have it as part of a website or an application. This would solve the issue of having to scrounge the internet for information on these topics, and could hopefully get more parents to feel comfortable bringing their strollers on the bus.