Lite Bike
For our second unit of Design and Engineering, we had to finish this term by designing a bike that would fit the persona given to us by our teacher. We had to design a bike using empathy. We learned about designing with empathy in our last unit. In this unit, we learned about speed conversions, gear ratios, Newton's laws, energy, derivatives, and we learned a lot about the volume and area of 2D and 3D shapes. We met virtually with a representative from Divvy to learn about the program that they have in Chicago and how they believe it is helping our communities. We went to a bike shop called Earth Rider to learn more about e-bikes and how they work. I worked with another student to complete this project, here I have attached the link to their blog post.
Our persona lives in Banff, Canada, and has to travel 3 miles to school every day. They have to travel along winding roads and it is often cold. They have to carry their school books during this ride to and from school. They store their bike in the garage, but there is not a lot of room. For our design, we decided that a lightweight frame would be easier for our persona to use since they are traveling every day. We choose to make the frame a bright color that would be easy to spot from far away. We wanted to add a really big front and backlight. This makes it safer for our persona to travel along winding roads when it is dark out. We believe it would be good to add grippy tires and strong brakes, especially since our persona sometimes travels in icy and snowy weather conditions. Since the weather conditions can be harsh we also decided to add spikes on the pedals so that the user does not slip when they are pedaling. We included quick-release wheels and a foldable frame so that the bike could be stored in small, tight places.
Most of these ideas that we included in our design have already been used in the designs of other bikes. So we came up with heated mitts that would cover the bike grips. This would help our persona when they are traveling in cold and windy conditions. This idea came up after an interviewee said, "Barmits changed winter biking for me."
C.H. "3D Design." Tinkercad, 2020.
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