E-Scooter educational graphics about how to behave from Calgary

Like scads of other cities, Calgary, Alberta (run by one of North America's most creative mayors, although he's had some failures too) has authorized e-scooters.

-- Shared electric scooter pilot, City of Calgary

But unlike most cities and likely benefiting from observation of previous practice, they released graphics about how to behave.
The one problem with the main graphic though is that it fails to mention that in sidewalk riding, scooters must defer to pedestrians, and ride at slower speeds.

Many cities are vastly improving their graphic design capabilities, and using the design method in many applications besides "graphic design," but clearly even some of the continent's most able cities have a great deal of opportunity for improvement.





Links to many past entries on design/graphic design/design method and local governments are included in this entry, "Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward."

And for design thinking and transit, "Branding's not all you need for transit." This piece focuses on the concept of transit as a design product.

Design in transit is more than just cool liveries for transit vehicles, such as those done for the trams in Montpellier, France, by famed designer Christian Lacroix.


From "How to explain product design to anyone" by Invision Studio:

Here are seven of the common steps in the product design process:

1. Define the product vision: Before the design process even beings, you need to understand why you need to pursue the product in the first place. Creating a product vision and strategy helps guide the entire team involved in the project, establishing a common understanding of what you’re trying to build and why.

2. Conduct product research: Once the vision is defined, gather user and market research to inform later product decisions. Conducting this research early on helps you save time and resources in the long run because fewer changes will need to be made. Examples of product research include user interviews, surveys, and market research.

3. Brainstorming and ideation: Based on the research you uncovered, it’s time to brainstorm ideas to address your project goals and solve customer pain points. You can follow many different techniques for ideation, like sketching, wireframing, or storyboarding.

4. Design and prototyping: By now, you should know what you want to build. During this phase, you’ll begin to create the solution and implement concepts with prototypes. Prototypes let you test the product before completely building it, offering something for users to react to in the next stage. You can make low-fidelity or high-fidelity prototypes depending on what kind of feedback you’re looking for from users.

5. Test and validate: At this stage, you’ll use your prototype to test and validate the concepts with users through usability testing. A high-fidelity prototype will allow you to dive deep into usability and workflows, while a low-fidelity prototype can help you validate the overall design concept (if you do use a low-fidelity prototype in this stage, you’ll continue to design and iterate until you get a high-fidelity version to hand off to developers).

6. Launch: Once you’re happy with the results from the usability testing, you’ll work with developers to build the product. You’ll also work closely with the marketing team to support the public launch, ensuring that the value propositions and messaging are consistent and accurate.

7. Post-launch activities: The product design process doesn’t end at launch—it is ongoing. You’ll work to understand how the entire user base interacts with the product, conduct A/B testing, and solicit regular feedback from customers.

The Arnett Muldrow planning firm uses the design method to drive their process. As a result they produce particularly creating plans.