E-bike Design
The Brief
"Research the Viking brand and design a personal Electric Urban bike for Viking (Gents) to be used in city for a regular commute.
This bike needs to be a fashion accessory and suitable for a person who likes and buys high fashion brands. This person likes to think of bike as part of his living room, when not in use. The solution needs to have good differentiation from existing electric urban bikes with some unique features. The graphical aspects of the design should also be considered.”
Research
Research included:
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Viking and other brand commuter bicycles;
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Folding bicycles;
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Electric bicycles and their parts;
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Bicycles being used as furniture/ high end models;
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Technology integration on bicycles;
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Graphical elements;
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Bicycle decals;
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Logo design;
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Colour psychology.
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Design, Development and Final Design
A basic design specification, mind map and morphological chart, along with the research and a mood board allowed initial ideas to be quickly sketched before moving into a conceptual phase.
A development phase followed, refining ideas in more detail, before using Pugh’s datum matrix to evaluate the designs against an existing bicycle.
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A final design was then chosen, basing the form on development 1. The final design also features some of the technological ideas seen from other developments however to provide a truly unique design. The final design results in a full size, foldable, electric bike containing an integrated screen, lock and uniquely houses a front facing projector that can connect to a device through USB/ Bluetooth.
Graphical Elements
To maintain the luxurious feel of the bike, the colour palette remained refined, using minimal colour. The colours that were explored however were ones that related to luxury and wealth.
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Exploration of ideas resulted in a simple black, grey and gold colour scheme, where gold bands were used as a subtle yet eye-catching feature. The Viking logo remained in line with its current form with the ’V’ standing out in gold and the rest of the text being greyed out to remain minimal and almost invisible.
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This is something that would particularly line up with the bike fitting seamlessly into a living room environment. Keeping the graphical elements minimal and sleek makes the bicycle feel more ornamental.
CAD
Further 3D visualisation of the final design was achieved through creating an assembly using Creo Parametric. Here it could be further understood how the different parts would act when being folded. Renders were completed using Keyshot.
Skills Used and Gained
Sketching (paper and digitally using Autodesk Sketchbook);
Creo Parametric;
Keyshot;
Design generation/ evaluation techniques;
Background research;
Graphic Design.