Bike In A Bag

This unit of Design and Engineering has been all about how people are making innovative creations to solve some of the world's most pressing problems. In this class, we had the opportunity to meet with multiple companies from around the Chicago area and have them talk to us about their journey in engineering and what is most important to them when thinking about making some of these products. We talked to Dyson and about their design process, we talked to Divvy on how they're designing their bikes to be accessible, and to a small bike shop called Earth Rider and what they value for their customers. To sum this up we had an assignment to make adaptions to an everyday bike so that it would best serve the needs of the person we were given.

Our persona was Mohammed. A sixteen-year-old boy walks five miles to school every day and wants an easier way to transport groceries from the supermarket to his home. A big concern for him as well is theft he wants to make sure there are some measures put onto the bike so that it isn't easily stolen.

Before we could get to designing though we had the task of interviewing someone we knew who bikes regularly and if they had the chance to change something on their bike what would it be? My interviewee Rob said that he "wishes there was some way to make the seat more comfortable." So when thinking about design, comfort, and convenience would be my top priorities. Although something to keep in mind is that you cannot take a seat too padded especially if you're on a longer ride because if so it could hurt you a lot because the padding is pressing up against your skin in a way that isn't shaped to it.

When first thinking up ideas for what we wanted the bike to look like we immediately went to storage. Since bikes you see usually put baskets in the front we wanted to stray from that a bit and put our own spin on back storage. The idea was that looming over the back wheel there'd be a rack, and of the sides, there be the bags and such you'd want to store away as well as a top crate for looser items. You can hang a backpack or something with a loop on the hook on the left side. Of course, there also had to plate separating the side storage from the wheel so they wouldn't hit one another. Another issue to be mindful of was the sandy terrain; so we covered all main gears with a thin metal cover just so nothing would get stuck in the chain or sprockets. 

Now the main idea and branding of the bike are that it would be able to fit into a bag attached to the right side of the bike that folds out. So after your ride when all your things are put away, the crate at the top collapses, the bike folds in half, and the bag detachable from the right side folds out into this bag the perfect size to put your bike in to put away. This makes it so to deter people who want to steal the bike or parts of it because you wouldn't think that a bag that small would be able to house a bike double its size. So it is not only solving the issue of theft but also of storage because it can be easily put away wherever you have room.

"Bike Sketch" D.N.(2021)

 After we had a solid idea of what this bike was going to look like the next step was modeling. A team brought in a few materials and some hot glue guns so we could get started but what they wanted you to keep in mind was that the model didn't have to be perfect. Over a few days, we were able to make a small model we then edited onto a background with a realistically sized human figure next to it or scale.

"Bike Terrain and Human Model" M.D.(2021)

With a good bike design, has to come pretty accurate measurements. We were shown this tool called Geogebra and both me and my partner, Maggie, hopped on a call so that we could make a kind of skeleton of our bike just to get an idea of how our wheels would realistically fit. When looking at the scale difference between the physical and digital models, the physical model's wheel diameter is two inches while the actual bikes would be 24.48 inches with a radius of 12.24. When building a bike the diameter isn't the only thing you need though. Looking up the average weight of a bike and someone of Mohammed's age we can calculate not only his average speed when riding but also his kinetic energy. Having an average of 10 miles per hour(or 4.4704 meters per second) and then multiplying that by the total of Mohammed's weight(averaged to be around 90 lbs) and the weight of the bike (20lbs). 110*10/2= an average of 550 joules for kinetic energy.

"Geogebra interpretation" D.N.(2021)

Kinetic energy was the most challenging to calculate. The circumference was much easier having you only multiply double the radius times pi giving us 76.91 inches for the bike wheel all the way around. 

But something new was introduced when doing calculations for our creation and that was gear ratio. The usual on a bike is 2.75 so we had to find what worked for that equation. You want the smaller gear being the one that you pedal because it gives you more acceleration that way. So a smaller gear of 16 and a bigger gear of 44 was just what we needed. 

This experience, while not being the most out-of-the-box Action Project we have done so far this year, was a really nice chance to take the feeling of human empathy and turn it into something new and unintuitive. I feel like we were able to make a bike that not only Mohammed would want to buy but tons of other people. It's solving a lot of problems, but many of the feature are detachable so you can make your Bike in a Bag look like whatever you'd like it to.