Duration

4 months (2021)

Role

Lead Researcher

Tools

Google Workspace apps, Typeform

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Under A Non-disclosure Agreement

Some of the details in this case study may be vague to protect the client's intellectual property.

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During the pandemic, commuting changed - it got quieter, more uncertain, less automatic. We partnered with LTA to revisit The Thoughtful Bunch, Singapore’s commuter etiquette characters, and asked a surprisingly tender question for public transport design: were these familiar faces still speaking to people in the right way, in a world that had changed so much?

Challenge

The original commuting personas had done their job - polite, helpful, visually consistent. But as public life got more complicated, etiquette started feeling like the wrong frame. You can't poster your way to empathy.

We needed to understand whether these characters could evolve from polite signage into something that could actually hold complexity, cultural memory, and the strange emotional texture of post-pandemic transit.

Beyond the functional brief

To understand how people were feeling about public commuting, we had to go past what they were doing.

• Diary studies where commuters documented their daily journeys — not just logistics, but feelings, reactions, what stood out.
• A quantitative survey of 1,000 respondents mapping behavioural patterns and testing which characters were remembered, which felt dated, who people actually related to.
• And a narrative and semiotic deep-dive into how visual elements like posture, expression, and gesture were quietly guiding civic behaviour — and where they were falling short.

What actually moves people

The most effective etiquette, it turns out, isn't taught. It's felt. The characters that made people pause or smile weren't the ones issuing instructions. They were the ones holding space.

Emotion-centred design landed better than instructional cues. Characters with richer inner lives (even imagined ones) felt more real and relevant. Small shifts, a softer expression, a shared glance, made etiquette feel communal rather than enforced.