Manufacturer, Retailer, Survey and Consumer Feedback - Design Research (Your help requested!)

Hi everybody, my name is Nick Boyd and I am doing research on bike accessory design. I am looking to enhance the riding experience of commuter bicyclers.

Here is a breakdown of some of the comments that would be helpful to me:
Pros and cons...
- of a bike itself
- of bikes based on the weather (rain, snow, cold hot)
- of bikes based on ability to transport items
- of bikes in terms of storage
- of bikes in terms of convenience
- of bikes in terms of safety
- of bikes in terms of time spent traveling
- of bikes in terms of security (i.e. the bike, its components, or anything stored on it being stolen)
- of bikes terms of clothing (Bottoms - dress pants, jeans, formal wear, skirts Tops - sweatshirts, coats, rain poncho, ext.)
- of bikes in terms of shoes
- anything not mentioned here!

Thank you so much for your help! If you would be willing to talk to me more, it would be great if you can e-mail me at nickb707@gmail.com. Both the community discussion and e-mails would be very beneficial to my research. Also, if you have IMAGES of anything you mention, that would be awesome.

Thanks again for your help. I can't offer you much in return, but know that you will be helping me out immensely! If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.

- Nick Boyd

Asking for quite a bit, aren't you? You couldn't be a bit more specific?

I'll start:

Pros of a bike:
A bike is faster than either walking or riding a horse.
Cons of a bike:
They are such a cool mode of transportation that they are more often stolen than either sneakers or horses.

Weather - I've never had issues with the weather, although I would not commute when I lived in Maine and the temps dropped below 0F

Ability to transport crap: for commuting, I just need to transport my lunch and perhaps a laptop, panniers work fine. If I needed to transport a ton of gravel, I would need to take several trips, or request delivery.

Storage is much easier with a bike than any other mode of transport save walking. I really got complaints about the pollution when I tried keeping a horse in the cube next to mine. People who drive their cars to work have to store their cars in remote locations.

Safety - the most common mode of transport in this country kills over 40,000 people per year, anything is an improvement over that - even skydiving into work.

My bicycle commute takes 35 minutes. If there is light traffic, the same commute takes 30 minutes in a car, if there is traffic, the car might take forever. Since I don't need to go to a gym, I figure that the bike commute is saving me at least 50 minutes per day.

Security is an issue, I believe because bikes are so damn cool. If I drove a smelly pickuptruck, nobody would want to steal it, so I wouldn't have to worry. The lower security is well worth the enhanced cool factor. Easiest way to have complete security is to not own anything that anybody wants.

I wear clothing and shoes no matter what method I use to get to work.

Shouldn't there be something about world peace in this questionairre?

You're going to have to make your questions ALOT more specific. People commute in a thousand different climate and traffic conditions, not considering equipment issues. There is no "average" commute that you try to market toward, which is why the "Show Us Your Commuting Bike" thread are all customized in some way or another.

It be helpful to know more about what your goal was, other than simply "bike accessory design research." Are you designing a specific product and you're trying to figure out how it'll fit into the market? Are you just looking for holes in current product offerings that you can design for? Are you trying to come up with a new product at all?

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Hi everybody, my name is Nick Boyd and I am doing research on bike accessory design. I am looking to enhance the riding experience of commuter bicyclers.

Here is a breakdown of some of the comments that would be helpful to me:
Pros and cons...
- of a bike itself
- of bikes based on the weather (rain, snow, cold hot)
- of bikes based on ability to transport items
- of bikes in terms of storage
- of bikes in terms of convenience
- of bikes in terms of safety
- of bikes in terms of time spent traveling
- of bikes in terms of security (i.e. the bike, its components, or anything stored on it being stolen)
- of bikes terms of clothing (Bottoms - dress pants, jeans, formal wear, skirts Tops - sweatshirts, coats, rain poncho, ext.)
- of bikes in terms of shoes
- anything not mentioned here!

Thank you so much for your help! If you would be willing to talk to me more, it would be great if you can e-mail me at nickb707@gmail.com. Both the community discussion and e-mails would be very beneficial to my research. Also, if you have IMAGES of anything you mention, that would be awesome.

Thanks again for your help. I can't offer you much in return, but know that you will be helping me out immensely! If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.

- Nick Boyd

Nick,

Your questions need to be more refined. For example WTF are you looking for?

Rework your questions utilizing a scholarly format and then comeback.

Is this for a product design class? PM me if you want more detail.