Integrated Designpreneurship (InD) Lecture - Enhancing Design Impacts in Urban Mobility Services

Good urban public transport is compulsory for a healthy metropolis. Metro and urban rail, bus and tram networks, and diverse modes of transport like ferries or cable cars must deliver a seamless service for urban mobile citizens. Paris is well known for the Eiffel Tower and its metro. For this system used by millions of people, design is a discipline completely involved in the challenge, beside architecture and all the engineers’ expertise. Even when the word “design” was not known or used, when the Paris metro was born, a design sense had prevailed, and despite highs and lows, it has never stopped. Today, design intervenes with its different specialisms—graphics and signage, product, furniture and vehicles, spaces, urban spaces, interaction and digital—in a global service design approach. And it’s not only about the metro, but also about its big brother the RER, the regional metro, the buses, and the trams.

Not only in Paris but in all parts of the world, like in Hong Kong, Tokyo, London or New York, public transport feeds the local identities and allows these cities to breathe, perform, and their inhabitants and visitors to live better. Everywhere, design is necessary to produce sincerely continuous and coherent customer journeys, making urban mobility systems more attractive and truly appreciated, and cities less polluted and more sustainable.

This presentation aims as much to demonstrate the impact of design on urban mobility as to reveal how design management must change in response to the challenges of urban mobility.