first interviewee - Daniel J. Watson

DJ interview notes:
Getting on bike: left foot then right swing
Riding long distances (right foot on pedal, left pushes off of ground)
riding long distances and then getting on (left step, right step, left foot on pedal, right swing

Difficult to fix:
-difficult to adjust breaks (need special tools)
-if re-angling is required (should be done by a professional)
-spokes (loose), you can fix, but it's very hard if you manage to break them
-The frame bends easily if your spokes are broken

wheels are made out of aluminum or carbon-fiber if you buy a more expensive bike
best place to store things: behind back wheel (not the front, unbalanced)
The chain falls off easily if you have a bike with multiple gears, if you don't adjust them, they'll fall off at least once a day
knowing what to do with the gearshift -counter-intuitive, but the auto-gear shift bikes are expensive and poorly made

lock issue: takes forever to lock up bikes + you have to look for someplace suitable to lock them up
-is it possible to make a bike you can fold and carry with you?

seat: uncomfortable,numbing (esp. for guys)
seat is usually adjusted in the wrong place (located at the same place when the user first buys it, even though you're supposed to adjust it to fit you.

quick release: seat and front wheel (easy to steal)

standing while biking instead of sitting-biking: you only do this for short bursts -going up hills or changing gears
C shaped handles for racing
T shaped handles for general use (difficult to bike if you have food/drinks that you can't put in a bag)

Mis-use of bikes: sitting on front - easy to unbalance, topple over, difficult to bike with too (blocks view)
-standing on pegs in the back (dangerous if they're unsteady and you suddenly make a turn, they can get caught on your back wheel
-biking very fast and then mashing on the brakes (can cause the cyclist to flip over the front wheel (if they brake the front wheel before the back wheel))

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When asked: out of all the things he talked, what would he like to change/correct the most?

He said that locking up his bike has always been a big issue because when you go to lock up your bike you have to detour to where the bike racks are and spend forever unraveling, properly adjusting your lock so that you can lock up both the front and back wheels of your bike (and of course that doesn't prevent thieves from stealing the seat because most bikes these days have quick release seats). So perhaps one thing to deeply consider is how to make sure bikes are secure or how to remove the incentive of stealing the bicycle. (i.e. take away an important component that makes it impossible to ride).

We did sort of consider making a portable bike that folds together, but seeing how many companies have done it in the past and the usual critique of issues with 'too small' tires and still too heavy to carry around, folding up your bike will still be a problem.

However, two ideas that were considered were: what if you could 'accordion' the bike's frame and the other idea was, what if you built the lock into the bike or made it so that if you broke the lock, the bike would be un-ride-able.

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The other main point that was brought up, was the bike's seat. Which is particularly uncomfortable for guys. When we asked why they couldn't try using a rectangular shake instead of the usual triangle shape for the bicycle, he said it made pedaling too difficult if there wasn't a center divide between the legs.

Unfortunately, because the shape of the seat is integral with the efficiency of the cyclist, we were so far unable to come up with a solution so far. However, we do recognize it as a serious problem for the male gender. Especially since more than one claims that after riding the bike for a while, they tend to go numb in the areas in which they use to sit on the bike.

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However, there are a few features we can handle, for example, the carrying food issue. Because we usually want to watch and make sure our food doesn't spill/tip over and since food doesn't weigh very much, a light, collapse-able food holder on the front bars of the bike might be beneficial to a lot of cyclists.

Whereas, the heavier loads (like books and notebooks) can be attached in a container behind the back seat, behind the back wheel (but narrow enough that it would not cause additional air resistance (which could hinder the biker).

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And finally, there was the problem with flipping over the front of the bike, while it is possible to create a sort of device that will stop the bicycle from completely flipping over the front wheel. The problem still remains that you cannot stop the cyclist's own forward momentum. So even if you kept the bike stable on the ground, the cyclist themselves would still flip over the front bars. Unfortunately, anything short of strapping the cyclist to the seat wouldn't really help in this sort of situation because the cyclist has too much forward momentum when they try to abruptly stop.

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While interviewing, we also realized that there were too many different kinds of bikes to consider from special terrain bikes used for extreme sports cyclists to racing bikes to very simple bikes with no gear shifts.

We realized that would have to narrow our scope to bikes that people typically use. So for our report, we'll mostly stick to bikes that are generally used for transportation (not racing or sports) and can gear shift (since the bikes that don't gear shift are usually used by younger bikers).