Helmets on, three members of the ADC team took to the streets of Abidjan by bike. An internal initiative, with no cameras and no protocol — just a team going to see for itself.
We spend most of our days designing interfaces, writing code and documenting user journeys. That is our craft. But it carries a quiet risk: ending up imagining uses from behind a screen, without ever experiencing them.
Practising what we stand for.
We advocate for digital that is useful, frugal and adapted to African realities. It felt only consistent to hold our own organisation to the same standard, starting with a simple gesture: getting around differently. The bicycle is not merely a talking point about the green transition. It is a use case, with its own constraints and surprises.
Riding through Abidjan, even over a short distance, teaches in minutes what no scoping note truly conveys: the real state of the road, the space left for cyclists, the heat depending on the hour, the gap between a distance on a map and the same distance actually travelled.
What the field teaches.
A constraint is better understood when it is lived. That holds for cycling as for every use case we design for: a producer checking weather information, a parent following a child's schooling, an agent entering a transaction at the end of the day. Behind every screen there is a context — an unstable connection, a shared phone, a moment in the day, a tiredness.
You cannot properly design for a use you have never experienced.
This conviction guides our method: spending time with the people concerned, observing before proposing, testing early and accepting to revisit an idea when the field contradicts it. A bike ride obviously does not replace a usage study. It simply reminds us where the work must start.
One team, one conviction.
Beyond method, there is the team. Going out together, moving differently and sharing a simple moment is also part of what we want to build: a company where environmental convictions do not stop at good intentions.
Photos: soft-mobility initiative by the African Digit Consulting team, Abidjan.