Oslo Bysykkel

Through open data from Oslo Bysykkel, this project explored new ways of addressing bike distribution in the city. We created a concept that used real-time insights to highlight local activities at underused stations, supported by a visual language inspired by Oslo Bysykkel’s identity.

Project Overview

Collaboration with Amalie.
This project explored the use of open data from Oslo Bysykkel’s Open API to design a concept around bicycle distribution in the city of Oslo. Since Oslo is situated on a slope, bicycles often accumulate in the city center while stations in the outer neighborhoods are left empty. Our goal was to encourage cyclists to park in the less popular stations by promoting local activities near those areas. The idea was to display real-time activities at stations with few available bikes. These messages would appear on digital screens at all bike stations across the city, rotating like advertisements when multiple stations were empty.

In the early stages of concept development, we considered collecting data from a week or a month to identify which stations were least used on average. After further development, however, we decided to work with real-time data, believing it would create a more dynamic experience. Activities connected to empty stations would therefore appear immediately on the screens across Oslo’s bike stations. If several stations were empty at the same time, the content would rotate on the screen in the same way as commercial advertisements. By looking at both historical and real-time data, we were able to identify which stations were empty, and by combining station IDs from historical datasets with the live feed, we could match them with their corresponding station names.

For the visual expression, I created the illustrations by first sketching them and then reworking them in Adobe Illustrator. I aimed for consistency through repeated elements and a balanced level of detail across the drawings. To align with Oslo Bysykkel’s own identity, I kept the illustrations as minimalist line drawings without fill or color.

The outcome of the project was a dynamic prototype showing how activities could be promoted at underused bike stations across Oslo. We also built a prototype website, oslobysykkelkultur.netlify.app, which brought the concept to life in a digital format.