







In this short article, we will present a original subway design to make the travelers trip more pleasant. We will try to merge multiple objectives to create a stress-free, secure, enjoyable and comfortable environement.









Elements:





Subway's users survey: A 2017 study in Paris highlighted a non-negliable user discomfort on severals axes, such as personal space, noise, time loss, and security. Anotherone in 2017 exposed a high number of sexual harassment complaints on the global territory, 85% of whom were women.





Paris' subway international image: The security and comfort argument is an important lever on a city's international influence. So much that it appears on the 2022 tourism strategy (p. 38) of Paris administration, and naturally in the 2021 engamen ts of the Île-de-France transports direction.





N udge theory : The nudge theory could be described as a concept to subtly influence consumers or user comportments, initially to help him make better choices, or to acheive compliance (I personally recommand to look at the examples for they are quite interestings — or disturbing). This could be:





Pain ting a housefl y on a urinal in men's public toilets to reduce uncivilities and the cost of maintenance.

Creating m usical stair s for an underground exit to make more people choose to take the stairs and unsaturate the escalator.









Idea shot:





The idea is to bring out an elegant solution to reduce the user's discomfort by creating an appealing environement. In our attempt to diminish the traveller's stress and anxiety, and making the trip enjoyable and more secure, we will cross art and nudge.

Visual art represents a powerful resource for mental and physical well-being. As exposed by th ese studies , interacting with visual art create a psychological distress, is helping people with mental health conditions, and create a community feeling, which logically decreases the global healthcare expenses.





Our solution is to change the entire wagons' wall covers for with clouds, space, or dreamfull patterns. Depending of the allowed budget, some glitter, glowing-in-the-dark, or reflectives elements could be added.









A wagon with clouds patterns - Leixios 2019





A wagon with space patterns - Leixios 2019









Achieving this idea could gamify the subway trip for young and older children, making it an unique experience, and more relaxing for adults.

The nudge effect of these patterns could also help to reduce the deviant comportments prevalence, such as robery, or harassment.

From a commercial point of view, this could play a major role in the international influence of Parisians subways — working like a tourism promotion campaign.





Open to thoughts:

To go further on the attention for comfort that could be brought to the travelers, we may dig for some other ideas, such as this one done in Japan, which consist in modifying a road to emit songs (that may be transposed to a subway railroad — to emit a continuous appeasing song), or working more on soundproofing wagons.





With Perception.Is.Art participation

License CC BY



