Jurassic train [EN]

(French version available here)

Here is a true story about regular people and a dinosaur in a train to Paris. (Original illustration: Gabriel Cecchi)

Hi, my name is Nicolas Demange and I am a UX Designer at ENGIE Digital. I am about to share with you a true story that happened to me on my daily commute to work.

I live in Chaville, a city close to Paris with a large forest where I can run on Sundays. Every morning, I drop off my two magnificent daughters at their school before jumping into a train heading to heart of the French capital.

This morning, as I am sitting in the train and as I am a good designer, I observe the people surrounding me. And at first glance, I notice something obvious: Parisians going to work are sad people looking at their feet or their neighbours’. As if the gravity of their situation was the same gravity pulling their heads down to the ground. Well, OK. It is early and not everyone is fully woken up but still, the sun is shining outside. This at least should put a smile on anyone’s face. No. At least, not today, not in my train.

Then, from this observation pops an idea in my head: why don’t we create shoes with jokes on them or funny stickers on the ground to initiate laughter in the wagons? As it is particularly difficult to laugh with your head down, it would be a smart way to make heads raise again and with a smile. On top of that, this perfectly illustrates a personal belief that humour elevate point of views.

Humour elevate point of views.

Thrilled by my useless yet humanist idea, I take my phone out of my pocket to check if such a product already exists. While waiting for Google to give me the results on “Jokes on shoes”, I look up again and, rather unexpectedly, make eye contact with the woman sitting in front of me.

This woman who, seconds ago, was part of this sad head-bent species, is now sitting straight and smiling at me. Then, right behind her, a man, of who I have only seen the tonsure until now, raises his head as well and looks at the sun through the window with an peaceful look. He is immediately imitated by a blond green-eyed woman. Then followed a young man with his head clutched in headphones. Unbelievable! I was so wrong. We Parisians are not dark and bent beasts. No, we do share this common will of human contact and connection with our world like meerkats wide-awake in the savannah!

Being relieved now on the humanity of passengers, I glance at my Google results and find myself face to face with a dinosaur… You know it, the Google’s Internet browser displays a tiny dinosaur when you lose your internet connection. That’s when it all became clear : I instantly understood what made them all raise their heads. We indeed had all something in common : no more network on our phones.

For a couple of minutes, my peaceful train had become an emotional roller-coaster, going from dark and fatalistic ideas up to magnificent hopes in the human nature.

This true story, that you may have experienced yourself, taught me or remind me several things on hyperconnection, cutting us out from people and things surrounding us. How many of them do we miss without knowing it when buried into our tiny screens ?

We should design to give users back quality time and make their life easier.

As UX Designers, we have a specific role to play here by setting and respecting an ethical frame. Rather than finding brilliant ideas to convince our users to stay as much as possible on our apps, we should design them to give them back quality time and make their life easier.

At ENGIE, I would like to highlight two initiatives going on that righteous path. On a first hand, we at the Design team of ENGIE Digital are creating our own Design Ethics to reinforce and share this virtuous frame as a checklist of good questions to ask on all our projects. On another hand, our Employee Experience program proposes to each Business Units an out-of-the-box workshop called “Harmony Day”. This disconnected day allows a team to reflect on their way to communicate with each other’s, to find alternative to the email supremacy and practical solutions to cope with the lack of efficiency of most of meetings. Thank to Design Thinking, those teams find together innovative ideas that they can execute the day right after.

Thanks to our strategic role into the creation of the applications of tomorrow, we designers have a great power over people’s attention. And with great power comes great responsibility.

P.S. : If any ready wants to go live with the market of Joke Shoes, just let me know! 😉