As a graduation project I had the chance to design a new bikesharing bicycle at basten leijh studio. The design has some very distinct features which make it an ideal bike sharing bike.
The first feature that really catches the eye is the unique handlebar. As for most sharing products goes, is that you don’t want to bother or give the user the option to tweak certain elements of in this case the bicycle. This mainly has to do with safety. To avoid this and to give users of different heights a handlebar height closer to their ideal ride height, the handlebar offers two positions. These position are based on the p25 and p75 of the western European population. Therefore users are never more than p25 off their ideal ride height.
The other feature that is clearly visible is the TEX-lock. A beautiful fabric lock consisting of multiple layers of different materials each providing a different manner of protection. The lock in this case has 2 use cases. One is obviously protection. The second is the illusion of a top tube. This makes the bicycle feeling more dynamic adding to the users experience of being a fast means of transport. This is important because the foremost use of bikesharing bicycles is for commuter transport.
The last unique feature is a electronic crankshaft lock hidden in the frame. The crankshaft lock renders the bike useless when stolen and therefore is very secure way of protecting.
Both lock are locked when inserting the texlock into the cranklock via a dedicated opening in the seat tube. The locks can be unlocked via an app. Increasing the user friendliness of the concept.