Stefan Lechner

Stefan Lechner, after completing his Bachelor’s Degree in Austria, he attended the Master of Science program in Product Design for Innovation at the Politecnico di Milano. The lively design of Milan and the tangible presence of Italian design history have allowed him to perfect his affinities for sculptural and aesthetic qualities. In the absence of mountains and skis, he has fun observing the linguistic and culinary finesse of Italian culture.

Project developed @ Polifactory:
“Integrating child into a contemporary bike sharing system. Contextual analysis followed by a design proposal for a family of children’s bicycles.”

Technological developments in the transport field, as well as their interconnection, increase efficiency and speed, allowing cities to develop decentralized residential centers. The result is a more homogeneous distribution of the population in the urban area, with the creation of small centers in the most peripheral areas. Local transport within and between these small centers follows different dynamics compared to large public networks, giving the opportunity to flexible systems such as car and bike sharing to emerge as valid alternative to traditional public transport. Until now, children have only been partially taken into account in designing these systems, completely requiring the parents to choose the means of transport. This thesis continuously relates the specific needs of children to special circumstances in growing urban environments, the opportunities offered by Sharing Economy and the social impact of a potential boom in cycling culture. The research tried to ignore the ideas and convictions of the children themselves, so that a series of interactive workshops were carried out, applying various participatory design techniques. As a result you have the concrete proposal of a family of children-sized bicycles, designed to be integrated into contemporary bike services. In addition to designing the range of physical products, we tried to take into account the more abstract aspects existing around the product-service system. Research and analysis focused on various themes related to the child-bike binomial constitutes the theoretical basis of the conceptual and technical part of the project. The ideas developed by the children in the workshops have been an important basis and in part, as far as possible, have been applied.