This week we caught up with cycle scholar Jo to find out how easy it’s been for her to cycle safely round the City…
“If a car toots you, they’re not saying ‘get out of my way,’” explained my bike riding colleague. “They’re saying, ‘I can see you.’”
On my cycle scholar journey I’m quickly learning the new rules of the road for safe bike riding and it isn’t what I expected.
I expected courteous waiting at lights, keeping to the left out of the way of cars and car free bike lanes (although the new Cycle Superhighways are a good start!)
I also expected pedestrians to look before they step out on the road, cars not to nudge me out of the way and cars not to over take me then immediately turn off in front of me.
How wrong I was.
London’s roads are a firsthand look at game theory and the way incentives and disincentives work (or don’t work). It looks pretty broken and everyone is ‘cheating’.
Over the last month, my first month of cycling in London has been fun, but my cycling style has changed. Now it’s much more about my cycling position on the road; riding so no one can overtake me at pinch points and getting to the front at the lights.
I’m also quite surprised that one of the most important parts of my bike is been the bell. Pedestrians and vehicles aren’t even looking so the high vis jacket has little impact. This distinctive ‘ping ping’ makes people look at me and that, I think, is half the battle.
This week sees the launch of 
The programme outlines actions right up to and past the 
“It had been a great summer of commuting, and then with a drop in speed, I looked down to see a flat tire.
Raising awareness for an existing service 
Another interesting element to the app is that, much like ‘checking in’ with 
Last week we headed over to 
“Summer is here and there’s no better time to start commuting by bike. It isn’t just the sunshine and less frequent rain either, as I’ve learned recently, central London erupts in the summer. The tube gets crowded with tourists and busses are jammed between road repair and masses of crossing pedestrians. By bicycle seems to be the only respectable way to get through the madness.
thinkpublic’s workshop with winning idea Go 10,000
Last week Go London winner Danielle Ramsey headed to thinkpublic to continue to work on her winning idea Go 10,000 (formerly the The 10,000 Steps Challenge).
thinkpublic are an award-winning agency focused on using design to improve services in the public sector. Their Managing Director Ben Kingsmill was one of our judges during the Go London finals, and helped select the Go 10,000 as a winning idea. As one of the prize contributors thinkpublic facilitated a Social Lab session, in which a wide range of people who work within innovation, the health service and charity organisations explored Danielle’s winning idea and to design and develop aspects of the challenge in more detail.
Initial idea questions:
To kick off the session Danielle presented the Go 10,000 and her journey so far. As she explained her developments participants noted immediate opportunities and issues, as well as areas that would be worth developing within the workshop.
A few themes emerged from the session, such as the best way to link in with London 2012, how to make the most of 2011 being the ‘year of walking’, how to remain inclusive by focusing on activity (rather than just sport), and ways to tackle health inequality across the City. After a speedy vote, we decided on two questions which could be explored further to develop the project, breaking up into smaller groups to ask:
How can we make Go 10,000 exciting for people?
Go 10,000 is all about getting as many people involved as possible. How do you not only inspire teams to get involved, but maintain that energy over the course of the four week challenge? The team explored ways to maintain a momentum to the campaign, such as shared diaries, tracking progress and emphasising the social element on the programme. The group also felt it was important to focus the challenge on being aspirational as well as inclusive, designing a project that would spur people to keep going even when they slipped up. We looked at the way in which being part of a team would act as a strong motivational element as well as the possibility of the programme helping busy people make time for exercise.
How might we use community access points to support people getting involved in the challenge?
The second group explored creating new touch points for the programme to spread – how could your community inspire you to get involved in such a campaign? What were the opportunities of partnering with ‘access groups’ in an area to embed the programme into people’s lives?
Examples such as an urban environment that would encourage activity (for example the new Cycle Hire Scheme or exercise areas in playgrounds) as well as the community rewarding involvement in the project – perhaps through events such as music gigs, something Orange are already exploring for customers that volunteer in their local area. In additon to these new touch points, the group highlighted that creating strong links with existing areas of people’s lives, such as community centres, local gyms, London authorities and council initiatives would be highly important for Go 10,000 to reach its full potential.
Each group then presented back to the workshop. thinkpublic had asked each group to think openly about different possibilities for the challenge by through asking questions such as ‘what if you had a billion pounds?’, ‘what would Richard Branson do?’ or even ‘what would this service look like in 2050?’; this approach meant that participants were able to look at tackling problems in a different way, triggering new ideas and areas that the programme could explore
Moving forward…
The session was full of great energy, and hopefully Danielle will come away with sparks of new ideas, as well as a few new friends of the project. Be sure to keep checking back here on the blog as we move forward with prize sessions from Precedent and M&C Saatchi.
Many thanks to thinkpublic for hosting a creative, productive (and fun!) workshop, as well as generously donating their designer’s time to help our winning idea.