About 18 months ago I moved to London from Vienna, a city where I first started cycling as a means of urban transport. The Austrian capital is so appealing for those on two wheels- it’s small enough to be able to navigate easily by bike, as well as being very flat. Read more

Over the past week I’ve had the opportunity to attend both the Passenger Focus’ event Passenger Power and the European Bus Operators Forum.  Both were interesting and it was great to hear how rail and bus operators are taking a keener interest in what their customers have to say. Read more

Last week we attended a Passenger Focus event which was convened to discuss their recent research into passenger perspectives on the franchise process.The survey found that most passengers see this process as lacking transparency and only paying lip service to passenger needs  Read more

As part of National Walk to School week, mum Jackie filmed Lily on her walk into school. Noah came too. Read more

In Walk to School week all of the children in the school walk to school.  If they live far away then they try to walk half of the way.  We do it to get people walking so they can get healthy. Read more

Niall and I were decontrolled yesterday. A customer service representative and numerous other staff at Gatwick Airport informed us that we were being “decontrolled”.

What on earth had we done in order to incur this punitive treatment?  Read more

I’ll begin with a case study. My own

I’ve always been aware of how physical activity improves my mood and lowers my stress but it wasn’t until recently, when the ability to run and jump was temporarily taken away from me that I realised just how important it is. Read more

During Walk to School week all the school walk to school.  If you walk to school every day then you get some kind of reward (like bacon butties on the Friday!). Read more

In support of the Mental Health Foundation’s Mental Health Awareness week initiative, many of us have been taking part in physical activity and other initiatives related to mental health and wellbeing.  Read more

In an amazingly short space of time, the walking thing has just became normal. And especially after the sunny gorgeousness that was yesterday, I found myself looking forward to today’s walk, and sorry that it was all going to be over at the end. But as regular readers will know, today was the Jazz Apocalypse. Read more

So today I walked to work with Maria Callas (recommended by Chrissie – thank you, Chrissie!). Maria and I got along pretty well, especially the part where she sang bits of Tosca to me as I walked along the edge of Wandsworth Common. Read more

Badges! I got badges! And cute pictures of muffins. And I’ve walked more than 10 miles in the last 3 days. Double figures, guys! Read more

I’m working up slowly to Jazz Day, as Friday May 17 shall henceforth be known. Yesterday was pretty easy, though I did have the odd fight with myself and the ‘skip’ button. Read more

Readers! I did it. OK, as we’ve established, it’s not far. It took an hour and I’m rewarding myself with muesli as I type. Let’s review my experience against some key objectives from LivingStreets. Read more

When I was about 14, much to my astonishment, my parents got cable TV. A few things happened as direct consequences: Read more

Still in recovery mode after the collapse of the franchising process for the West Coast line, the Department for Transport probably breathed a collective sigh of relief when the press decided not to make a bigger deal of April marking the 5^th anniversary of its starting procurement for the new Thameslink rolling stock. Read more

In support of Mental Health Awareness Week and Walk to Work Week we are going to be taking part in a range of activities from May 13-17. As well as some of our staff walking to work we will also be going for walks in our local park and arranging after work games. As with NHS Change Day, small steps can lead to big changes (see page 9 of this pdf for how we helped).

I have spent the last two days at the Innovation Enterprise Big Data conference. At first I felt overwhelmed by the barrage of new terminology and acronyms – Hadoop, Hive, Storm, Map Reduce, ETL, distributed nodes, polyglot infrastructure…I could go on. Read more

Kate Anderson has been promoted to Joint Managing Director of the RS Consulting Group.  She replaces Phil Stubington, who has decided to step back from the role of Joint MD to focus on developing the Group’s strategic relationships with key accounts.  Phil will also lead the Group’s innovation programme, capitalising on the success of its award-winning research platform, e-luminate. Read more

Last week the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group (APPCG) set out their recommendations to the government, which if implemented, could facilitate significant growth in cycling across the UK.  The Get Britain Cycling report has been widely welcomed by cyclists, cycling organisations, transport and public health planners.  Read more

The recent measles outbreak has clearly brought the MMR scare back to top of mind again for many. It has also prompted us to think about how – as researchers – we’re frequently asked to assess varying information sources in a very rational way: Read more

On a recent commute, I read with interest that households are now more worried about the rising cost of living than they are about their health.  According to data from uSwitch released in the build-up to the budget next week, more than half of households (55%) said that their biggest concern was the cost of living, compared with less than a third (29%) who saw their health as their main priority. Read more

I blogged a few weeks ago about the possibilities that the smartwatch might offer market researchers.  Of course there is one bit of kit already – well almost sort of already – out there today. Google goggles …or GoogleGlass as it is more properly known.   Read more

Conference speakers! Loads of you have talked to me in the last 12 months. And I have (mostly) listened. I’ve been intrigued and inspired by what some of you, elsewhere in research-land, are doing. I’ve enjoyed talking further with many of you afterwards in the queue for coffee. Read more

At the Travel Technology 2013 conference last week in London there was a wide variety of exhibitors and speakers – representing distributors, analysts, reservation and payment systems, consultants, marketing, social media and journalists. Read more

I haven’t owned a watch for quite a few years, but The New York times are reporting that Apple are apparently playing with loading their iOS software into a wrist watch.  Apple aren’t the only ones investing in smartwatch technology. A great crowd funded start-up called Pebble also has a bluetooth enabled watch. Read more

We need to talk about the big C. Cancer. You may well be thinking ‘Talk about cancer, don’t we do enough of that already?’ Unfortunately the truth all too often is no, we don’t. Admittedly cancer is frequently in the news either in the form of a fundraising initiatives, such as Movember, Race for Life  or regarding a new treatment made available (or not) on the NHS. Read more

In many Western economies the term “pensions crisis” has entered popular discourse, attributed to a variety of causes including an ageing population, under-funding, apathy towards saving on the part of the public, and poor financial returns. Read more

The overarching concern of NHS staff is how the NHS can improve care while simultaneously reducing cost. For 75% of staff that we surveyed, cost and quality are viewed as trade-offs or alternative priorities, with the belief that cost reductions will inevitably lead to a reduction in quality. Read more

The scenes over the last two weeks as London Underground celebrated its 150^th Anniversary have served to highlight that many of the challenges facing the capital’s transport network would seem very familiar to the original promoters of the tube and their investors. Read more

The arrival of the author’s tickets for next weekend’s steam on the London Underground specials has prompted some reflections on the value of history as a part of the marketing mix for today’s transport industry. The bus and rail industries are unusual in that it’s possible to see earlier incarnations of their product in use in their original environment and many of the major players in the UK (TfL and Stagecoach for example) are active in maintaining their history. Read more

It’s hard to miss the headlines informing us that obese people could have their benefits cut unless they start exercising. This is bound to spark considerable debate over why only overweight people are being punished and not smokers or drug addicts or why overweight people should be allowed to put a strain on the healthcare system. Read more

The Department of Health estimates that a lack of physical activity across the UK costs the NHS over £8 billion each year (1).  To put that into context, that’s the equivalent to the annual salary of more than 300,000 nurses. Read more

I noticed earlier in the week that the NHS have published their Pensions Scheme contributions calculator for 2013-2014. Whilst it wasn’t quite what I expected when I started to play around with it (I thought it was going to be one of those “if we assume x, y and z, then if you continue to make your current pension contributions you’ll be living on nothing for 20 to 25 years” types of model) it did start me thinking. Read more

Working a 9-5 job in an office, it’s difficult to avoid a largely sedentary lifestyle, complimented by a desk drawer full of sugary snacks and a kitchen often containing foods – mostly edible – from colleagues’ travels. So when I was first given the opportunity to participate in a company-led pedometer initiative, I was a little afraid of how embarrassingly poor my results would be! Read more

Francesca Martinez (the Comedian With Cerebral Palsy) argues that the opposite of disabled is not ‘non-disabled’, it is ‘not yet disabled’. We currently use these terms as if there is a clear and stark separation between these two categories, and yet it is evident that most people undergo a gradual loss of their physical and mental capabilities over the course of their lifetime. Read more

Just last month the Royal College of Midwives put the spotlight on Britain’s current baby boom. Certainly the proliferation of “Baby on board” badges on my train each morning would seem to bear testament to the veracity of these figures. Read more

Use of the internet is dramatically changing everyday lives. How many of us now send an email instead of picking up the phone or shop online instead of going out to the high street? Similarly the proportion of online research we conduct has increased rapidly. Read more

Wednesday 7^th November saw the 14^th National Stress Awareness Day. The focus this year was on drawing attention to stress in the work place, and encouraging people to identify and combat this. Read more

Watching a TV programme a few evenings back, about how safe Britain’s roads are, reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to write about…. not so much about vehicle safety (although there is a link and, worryingly, road deaths are on the rise for the first time in years), Read more

I’m fairly certain that if I went out and asked the man or woman on the street which illness costs the NHS most money each year, and also costs the economy most money each year, I’d receive quite a wide range of answers. Read more

Over the past year mruk research, as part of the Cello Group, has been involved in a ground breaking piece of research on behalf of the teen mental health charity YoungMinds. Talking Taboos – ‘talking self-harm’ was launched on Tuesday in central London. Read more

Last week we were at the Travel 2020 conference at the Oval cricket ground.  This is the technology-focused transport conference where a wide range of organisations come to showcase the products they have developed to improve passenger travel.  Read more

Last week, we exhibited at the Travel 2020 conference where operators, infrastructure and technology suppliers, passenger representatives and a wide range of other stakeholders gathered to explore how technology is driving change in the transport sector. Read more

In both the transport and graphic design worlds, the story of how electrical draughtsman Harry Beck created the Tube map as we know it sits in an odd space between subject of serious historical study and urban myth. Read more

Commuting is competitive and tactical. Seasoned commuters have perfected their strategies, knowing the exact spot on the platform where they can board the train with the minimum risk of getting elbowed in the ribs, safe in the knowledge selecting this carriage will mean they have the shortest walk to leave the station at the other end. Read more

Why is ethnic diversity important? Ethnic identity is often a very personal subject that impacts us in our daily lives, but how individuals from different communities function has wider implications for society as a whole—both good and bad. Read more

The saying goes ‘home is where the heart is’, however in our current economic and social climate housing seems to be at the very heart of our economic crisis.  With high house prices coupled with banks & building societies requiring large deposits, plus concerns over job security, home ownership continues to be well out of reach for millions across the UK.  Research by the National Housing Federation showed that the average age of a first time buyer in the UK without parental assistance is now 39. Read more

I’m normally irritated by the predictable use of sporting competitions to stir up nationalism. It seems pretty irrational to identify with other people just because you’re from the same place, rather than sharing the same interests: doesn’t a British nurse have as much in common with a French nurse as she does with a British banker? Read more

Last week I travelled with Eurostar to a client meeting in Paris.  On emerging from the Channel Tunnel in France we were informed that we would have to swap trains in Lille due of a technical fault with the train, meaning we would be over an hour late into Paris. Read more

I attended the NHS Confederation’s Delivering Better Health Services conference last week in Manchester.  There was a lot of noise around public involvement in research and adopting a participatory approach, and it did make me question the extent to which this happens in research.  I outline below what I see as some of the key elements to conducting good participatory, people-centred research.  Read more

Earlier this week I attended a Government Communication Network/ Government Procurement Service event on the future of government communications and communications procurement (sounds enthralling, I know!). Read more

I read with interest about a recent survey conducted by the Institute of Sport at Loughborough University that it is only around one in eight girls who reach the standard level of fitness by the age of 14 years.  Read more

Earlier this week I read an interview with Abhijit Banerjee, MIT economist and co-author of Poor Economics described as “Freakonomics for the billion people on earth who live on less than a dollar a day”. Read more

One of the great pleasures in the life of a researcher is having the opportunity to be involved in the creation and development of new products and services – from those first sparks of ideas, when those first little seeds are germinated right through to the detail of packaging, pricing or communications.  Read more

Over the past 24hrs the media has been awash with proposed moves to  “fine” parents for their children’s unauthorised absence from school meanwhile over on Radio 4 this morning, debate raged over whether the NHS might “bribe”/“incentivise” (both terms are used) the obese to lose weight. Read more

I’ve recently returned from a week in South Africa so I am trying to get used to the cold weather and ‘normal’ life.  I always enjoy visiting new places and I love getting the chance to explore and experience cultures so different to those I’m used to in the UK.   Read more

The issue of improved safety for cyclists has been a key talking point in the media over recent weeks.  At the forefront has been The Times, who have led with their Cities fit for cycling campaign, launched after journalist Mary Bowers was badly injured on her way to work in November 2011 and still remains in hospital.  Read more

A campaign that’s really grabbed my attention this new year is the Time to Change initiative to get people talking about mental health issues and end the stigma around mental health. Read more

It goes without saying that the technological paradigm shifts of the last 30 years have had, and continue to have, a massive impact on the way we live our lives.  No part of our day to day existence remains untouched by the digital revolution.  Read more

From March Londoners will have a new way to pay for travel.  If you’re lucky enough to have a contactless bank card you will be able to use it when travelling by bus. Read more

To complement the recently published Portas Review on the British high street, we conducted two focus groups to gauge sentiment and find out what improvements could be made to make the high street more relevant to local residents. Read more