Liaisons: cycling mobility service for the Greater Paris metropolitan area

Self-initiated project, EnsAD, 2019

The Greater Paris is currently being built. It is vast and made of numerous territories existing near each others without being connected. To create a metropolis, local scale should be visible at global scale ; atmospheres, life and stories will reveal the identity of territories ; the bike, as an exploratory tool, would allow inhabitants to represent themselves these places, giving shape to the metropolis.

The metropolis is made of 12 groups of municipalities.

Greater Paris exploration: an immersive cycling experience to form my own metropolis.

Greater Paris: understanding and analysing the cycling experiences

Field work, meetings with several experts in different field and desk research helped me to understand the project’s stakes and the problems to tackle. The percpetion of the greater Paris area and bike practices were important to identify in order to define design directions.

Cycling moments: potential design opportunities.

From these I designed the service to invite people cycling to commute for their leisure. Places to join (sport structures, natural sites, cultural institutions, craftmen, events...) are presented through networks to open perspectives. It is also important to accompany cyclists with cycling infrastructures, services dedicated to them and sensitive perspectives upon territories with in situ installations.

Personas made to synthetise and analysis of cycling practices: from meetings and readings.

Scenarios, dirty prototypes and tests in situ

It was an iterative process. I drew upon field observations scenarios that generated physical devices to design. These devices were quickly prototyped to be tested in situ. These helped me to better consider cyclist’s perception and the overall bike experience.

︎Seeing an historical monument.
︎ Observation drawing made during tests.

Test: indication of an historical monument on the other side of the road.

Liaisons, a cycling mobility service

Liaisons is a service for people to commute by bike between activities and places of leisure. It gives people tools for exploration and invites users to always go further. It materialises with a digital search plateform linked to an existing mobility application (Vianavigo, which is dedicated to the region of the Greater Paris). It is also a floor wayfinding, used to navigate from one place to another and showing what can be reached by bike. The project process is envisioned as a long term project, aiming to integrate inhabitants and cyclists in the creation of itineraries, wayfinding and digital content.

Wayfinding on the floor is used to commute from one partner of Liaisons or place of interest to another.

Bakeries can be partners: sell a good cyclist’s bread.

Screens from the digital platform: it displays a network of partners.

POC (Proof of Concept) of Liaisons

Numerous users scenarios were developed, I chose to prototype one at 1.1 scale and test it. This test intended to show the values of the service and to gather feedback from potential users.

Drawing from the POC scenario used for communication.