We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer Corentin Bricout about their original and creative Learn Cycling design work. Corentin Bricout is an award-winning industrial designer, that makes our world a better place with their original learn cycling works.
Corentin Bricout ("CB") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work AKO Balance Bike Learn Cycling. Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
CB : Cycling can be complex to learn. The goal of the bike is to make the learning process more kids-friendly by making every step visible for them and for their parents. The design was thought to make this experience as smooth and memorable as possible.
CB : Our aim has been to divide the learning process and make each step visible, to adapt to the kids evolution. Another real problem with most of the existing kids bikes is the weight. The team focused on making our bike lighter in order to be easy to handle, balance and control. We achieved this goal thanks to the perforated frame as well as single-sided fork and chain stay. The chosen material is recycled plastic, also thought to lighten the bike.
CB : The team is very happy and proud to have won this award, it is a beautiful way to celebrate a big team work. The best thing we could expect would be to see this balance bike on the market, and see kids learning with it.
CB : We worked on this project for 4 months.
CB : The initial brief given to the team was to re-imagine the "first bike" experience for toddlers, with this question : Why walk when you can ride ? After a lot of meetings with kids and observations, it was our decision to design a balance bike and choose this direction. We were supported by our client (Matthieu GERMAIN and Elise LOEUILLE were following our creative process) so we had a direct feedback from the industry about materials, process, competitors, innovations, etc.
CB : The project belongs to Goldcorss Cycles (Rebel). It hasn't been produced yet.
CB : All our inputs from kids behavior, motor skills, needs and wants made us make different choices. This is how we came up with our idea of a new way of learning cycling.
CB : We were followed by Matthieu Germain, engineer, and Elise Loeuille, lead designer of Goldcross Cycles. But also by our trainers in ISD. So of course their professional opinions had an impact on our work.
CB : The target users are the kids (2-4 years old), the customers are their parents. That's why we included the parents in our design thinking.
CB : We designed this bike with a kid's point of view, trying to understand them as much as possible. The focus was to be adapted to kids, to their size and proportions, to their evolving skills in order to create the best memories out of the whole experience.
CB : In the Maori language, the concept of ako means both to teach and to learn. As it was meant to be developed mostly for New Zealand and Australia, we decided to name the bike AKO.
CB : In a first time, field researches, meetings families, taking pictures and videos of kids cycling. When it came to the creative phase of the design process, we sketched (hand sketch) a lot and filled the walls of our studio with ideas during 6 weeks. We also tried physical explorations, building quick prototypes to test and validate ideas. Later we used photoshop for renders, illustrator to refine the shape of the frame before jumping into 3D modelling and renders. The final step was the building of our prototype in the workshop.
CB : What makes AKO unique is the way kids are using it : everything is adapted to them and thought to be easier and safer.
CB : As an engineer, Matthieu Germain was helping us with all our technical questions.
CB : Technology such as 3D softwares helped us designing and building the bike.
CB : For most of our researches we have been meeting families, asking questions to both kids and parents, observing how kids ride different bikes, etc. and finally, to really understand kids, we tried to ride a 50kg bike in order to understand where and when our design could make a change. This is what drove us to this design.
CB : Kids are very complex users, they are fascinating. Understanding them completely was a big challenge, but this is what drove the full project.
CB : The team worked hard for this project, with a lot of passion and dedication. We are all proud of this design so we decided to submit it to an international design competition as the best way to end the project.
CB : The process was very user-centered, the whole team improved their analysis and research skills. It required also a lot of coordination to cover all the aspects of the process.
