These
days, we often face opportunities to rate things and experiences such as
movies, books, goods, services, etc. What if we could directly rate people
using our smartphones? What if the average rate that people give us would
change our lives?
In
the 2nd event of Urban and Transport Challenges on Screen, we watched
“Nosedive” which is one of the episodes in the famous British TV series, “Black
Mirror”. As part of this event, a lively
discussion took place after watching the episode. Some important points from
the discussion are noted below.
Nosedive
is set in an alternative reality where people can rate each other. The main
character, Lacie, is obsessed with the rating game. One day, Lacie was invited
to a wedding of her old friend, Naomi, who had a very high average rate. She
understood it as a good chance to boost her rate to make her dreams come true.
However, things did not turn out to be as good as she expected.
From
the perspective of Transport Planners, we see that this episode gives us the
opportunity to reflect on the current transport services that already function
based on rates such as Uber. In these services, the users take the role as
active agents who provide their opinions and feedback to the community. We
discussed the advantages and disadvantages these rating systems create.
Rating Uber Drivers
We
do not rate each other at the moment to escalate social status and access to
better opportunities as the series showed. However, rating systems are becoming
more and more common especially in online purchasing of goods or services. In the
transport system, Transportation Network Companies such as Uber or Lyft are an
example of how the drivers and the users are exposed to this “rating game”.
Rating
systems are very innovative idea to keep
the service efficiency levels for the shared platform economy. One positive
aspect of these systems is that customers can potentially receive more
convenient and satisfying services. In terms of Uber, users obtain chances to
avoid “bad drivers” by checking drivers’ average rate. However, little is known
of the effect of drivers rating the users.
From
the driver’s perspective, the rating systems would be overwhelming. One of the
characteristics of rating systems is that people can give positive or negative
feedback very conveniently. This feature is essential to encourage people to
give feedback. Yet, it also gives people opportunity to give feedback following
their temporal emotion. Though it is the
best if drivers can give the perfect experience to passengers all the time,
isn’t it a little bit too harsh to expect drivers being very nice all day?
Rating Bus drivers – Average rate as a data
of source
The
users of public transport services often face dissatisfaction with the
services. Introducing rating system to express opinions about the services
gives the operators feedback which may lead to improvement of their services.
In fact, the satisfaction with the bus services has already explored through
focus groups, survey, interview to passengers on a bus, etc.
For
instance, Transportfocus (2016) reported that bus passenger survey was carried
out in the UK. The results of the survey were later used to understand the
level of dissatisfaction of bus users. Bus drivers have already been rated.
Hence, if we introduce the system that passengers rate a bus driver for every
journey as well as other qualities of bus services, a lot of things can be done
using this huge data.
Is this episode just a script?
Currently,
all Social Network Services such as Facebook and Twitter have a function to
give “like” to others’ posts. Many service providers ask us to give feedback
about services we receive. There are gated societies where only “high average
rate” people can enter. In many occasions, we may have already been “rated” and
judged by “average rates” which does not show who you are but who others think
you are. Although Nosedive is set in alternative reality, it seems that we are
already living in a very similar society.
We
haven’t experimented any explicit issues delivered by a rating system as Lacie,
the main character of the episode, faced. Nonetheless, in the future, we might
face problems when the rating systems become more common as businesses based on
shared platform economy grow. At that time, we expect that rating systems have
developed in such a way that individuals’ bias caused by internal and external
factors are considered.
I
hope society will not fully rely on one piece of information, a rate, and keep
being critical bout their judgement. Besides, I hope we can use this great
chance to obtain the new big data to improve the transport system and the
future society as a transport planner and as one of the citizens of this world.
Haruko
Nakao
[Reference]
Transportfocus.
2016. Bus Passenger Survey Autumn 2016 Report. [Online]. [Accessed on 10th
May].
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