Saturday Night, 12 midnight

"I should lock it up you know ... but I don't have a lock, I'm homeless and looking for work you know, looking for food."

Utilizing RFID as a solution

Another few ideas came today after speaking with a bike mechanic and a guy who recovered his bike from the man that stole it by tricking him into "selling" it back to him. More details on flickr.


Because factory companies don't give components serial numbers, enabling cyclists to put unique IDs on their own components could help the recovery of stolen bike parts! In a user-created-content forum/database key data can be entered to catalogue a user's parts (and a batch of parts). A serial number will then be assigned to the component and the user can a) engrave the information on the part, or b) the system can send the user a set of serial ID stickers (with RFID implants?) to stick in discrete areas on the component.

A tracking system for bikes using RFID stickers is outlined in this sketch/scenario:

Research and Systems

I ran around town today and spoke to quite a few people about bike theft in Savannah. The police didn't have a lot of "readily available" information and made me run around a lot, calling people at various departments, none of which were there cause it was Friday...but plenty of leads to pursue come Monday... the "Property Room" and it's detectives and sergeants as well as the assigned bike investigators.

I contacted SCAD security and spoke to a few people that were good resources and also pointed me in strong directions. SCAD's procedure for stolen bikes goes like this:
I spent a good two hours at the new bike shop in town first gathering information, then because I got a flat tire right after I left and I had to go back and buy a patch kit.
The guys at the store relayed lots of opinions about the state of bicycle theft and what can be done about it. On registering bikes with the police or national registry one told me "It's all fruitless," because most bikes are chopped, resold, auctioned or shipped out of the area. Most agreed that in Savannah however, you can usually recover a bike because it was taken on a whim by an impoverished person and is probably being ridden around by them or someone similar.
"The worst thing you can do is lock up overnight." This is a common consensus among the shop workers who also agree that lack of proper locking and even more so, education on how to lock a bike, are the main causes of bike theft in Savannah.
Although the downtown shop takes in donated and refurbished bikes they claim to have not been offered a stolen bike since their opening a month ago. In the past they have called the police as soon as they sense the bike being offered was stolen, an event happened to everyone in the shop.

One of the results of all this was an idea for a system that may address some of these issues. I got pretty excited about it's potential but I realize it's only one idea and it's pretty complicated. RFIDs are not the answer, but this is a step in the direction of system design that could change (or positively affect) how people lock up and think about bikes.


More details on this idea at flicker.

Unfinished thought, part 1

The difference between industrial and interaction design has never been more simultaneously apparent and blurry than at the start of this project.
I came into this wanting to do “a strict industrial design project” – something that I really haven’t done since Studio I – just user research, ideation & sketching, creating a product, then making a model. I consider this different than an “interaction design project” in which there would be loads of contextual and quantitative research, a concentration on synthesis, and a system or idea created to address the opportunities found in the research.

A few things happened. Tom said I needed to back up from my proposal to do more research and let that be the driver the project. I said I wanted to come into the class with a solid direction so I could start developing a product right away in order to have as much time as possible to create a fully functional prototype.

So now I’m torn. I have backed up and I am doing more research, both secondary (blogs, forums, newspapers, crime statistics, video documentaries) and primary in which I’ll go speak to some area experts (police, security, bike shops, thieves and users). I love research. I would just do this for most of the quarter, which is what I’m afraid of. If I don’t get right into development there won’t be any time for prototyping.

But this research is revealing so many new opportunities I honestly don’t think another product is going to be the answer. Like most of the other projects I feel like the product is just another band-aid to slow the festering of a larger problem.

Serveral accounts state that bike theft is part of a vicious cycle that enables junkies and drug rings, and is therefore a crime of opportunity and necessity for a fix. In Portland,

“Bikes are one of the four commodities of the street — cash, drugs, sex, and bikes…You can virtually exchange one for another."

This leads one to believe that something more important than another bike lock must be created to solve this problem. To break a cycle that affects all major cities in the US and is too small to be addressed by police or government will require a systematic approach to service, community and culture.

I a way this is exactly what I was trying to avoid. It’s good, it’s familiar and it’s exciting. The think I consider myself weakest at is my ability to synthesize research into viable design opportunities that can be translated into tangible solutions. So now I’m one week in and I don’t know what I’ll be making but I know it will be good.

Remedy anyone?

First Step

Check out my design proposal presentation from the first day of class!

And I wrote a quick design brief that explains the project in greater detail. In the event too much effort is required to read the actual documents, here is the opportunity statement identified for the project:

Opportunity exists for the development of a contextual bicycle tool that prevents wheel theft and visually communicates security and status through its detailed design and application.
Exploring the need for bike components is a dynamic application of industrial and service design techniques through the modeling, testing, implementation and interaction of the product with it’s end users