baby carriage

I saw this really cute cute thing on the internet for babies while doing research for the bike bar. It’s a child’s seat for a bike. I know, they have those things already, but it’s a front mounting seat that is essentially the bikers POV and your child is in the front center. It is held on together by just one bar with is clamped on the handlebars. I think it promotes such a good lifestyle and family bonding. Just like our bike bar.

fun biking

As continuing with this biking project, we started focusing more upon the biking concept. Why do people want to bike and what drives them to bike? So we narrowed the scope down to suburbia- since the roads are better maintained and also wider, the people living there have time for leisure activities and the standard of living is generally higher than the city. Plus biking can cultivated by the “family” bonding. With that in mind, we wanted to do a bike bar, a bar that connects bikes (and people) together. I know it sounds really cheesy, but there’s a  those two person bikes are cute. But no one wants to be seen riding those. Plus, you don’t have the same conversation ease such as sitting in the passenger side of the car talking to a driver. But by biking side by side, you are able to talk to the person at ease, you are not worried about drifting off. Also, you can attach more than one to a bike so it could be a group of two, or three.. or even four. The law states that you can take of a lane with more than two bikes. Hence, this allows bikers to bike safely on roads and also, converse with each other while promoting excercise and yes, bonding time.

mmmhmmm plastic

So taking a materials class makes me appreciate more the materials of products. I was looking looking a plastic container on the internet for like a million hours and somehow I can’t find the right size. However, if it Is indeed the right size, then the materials suck. One pet peeve is gating, where I find a container the right size, but there’s an ugly ugly circle with a nipple on the inside to showcase how cheap the plastic really is. It makes me appreciate the nice clear plastic containers in my life- such as the box the ipod came in. They really thought about packaging. They could have just thrown it in any plastic box, but they took care to make sure it looked good and well manufactured (the perception of value…) and also, how they made it so clean cut and smooth and why can’t everyone just make it clean and smooth.

FUSTRATION

So basically I came a “designer block”. After so many ideas, it just feels like I’m running in circles in design. Some days it feels like I’m milking the creative juices dry. I basically came up with short distance ideas- not involving cars, or some sort of wheeled foot device… and it just gets more and more complicated. Once I try to simple things down, it’s like, oh yeah… it’s like a bike slash Segway… or roller blades… or a different type of webcam… or a better pedometer. It’s hard to think of a single product without changing the system. Or idealizing society. Of course something that hinders cars would encourage people to walk short distances more, but then, who would buy it? The vast majority of people expect technology to “advance”.

PS. I thought this was funny.

http://www.burbia.com/node/2113

how far can I go

After brainstorming the other day, I was wondering about short distance travel and how far I can do with that topic. I started wondering how we started using wheels it in the first place. I guess it is the most simple structure…  wheels, carts, bicycles, roller blades, cars, I mean they all have wheels. What if instead of wheels, we make a zipline style kind of travel? Instead of roads, we just zip ourselves on lines connected to  various places? Wouldn’t that free up all the roads also?

bigger than roller blades

Today in class we re-started our project. We originally wanted to do a “new inline skate” and wanted to make it cool, decked out, collapsable, safe and everything you wanted a roller blade to be. It is going to be small enough to bring with you in short distance trips- to your friend’s house, to the local grocery store, then when you get there, you can take it off and keep it with you.

However, after a class discussion about the problem, we realized that we are just “bandaging” a problem with “new inline skates”. In that sense, we ignored the larger problem, which was actually short distance travel. After having a mini-epiphany, we started brainstorming of different means of going about the problem. We started limiting our scope to the suburbs, were short distance travel is not necessarily used because most everyone has a car. Our initial ideas ranged from a zipline to a system that encourges walking, instead of driving.

The only thing I really wished for was that we talked about this sooner. But then again, I guess that’s the design process, going back to scratch… too bad it’s so time consuming.

fun day at piedmont park

So for my group project, I went to piedmont park with Mira and Lauren to do some initial group observations. On Tuesday, we found a spot to sit and observe (and take creeper pictures of people passing by). My favorite however, was this dad who was all decked out in biker gear and attached on his hardcore bike was this little cart thingy that holds small children. I mean, I know products like these existed before but I have never seen one in real life before. I thought it was so cute that people actually use these and play around with them. I think it subconciously promote a healthier lifestyle later on- maybe the baby inside would grow up and remember sometime ago, it was fun riding in a cart and feeling a breeze in your face. Then they will grow up, be mommies and daddies and use this little cart to drag around their babies.