City Racks

The Challenge:The City of New York hosted a design competition to redesign their standard bike racks. HumanCentric saw this as a great opportunity to have some creative fun during lunch. We put together a small team of employees interested in the competition and set to work.

The Approach:

• Research existing bike racks that are currently in use in cities all over the world.
• Post questions pertaining to good bike-locking practices on cycling blogs to get direct feedback from the cyclists themselves.
• Brainstorm and sketch a variety of alternative new bicycle racks.
• Model rack in CAD and use rendering to show how the rack would look in real world environments.

The Result:The “Cycle Spot” form is derived from the repeated circles that can be found on the bicycle itself. Our bike rack includes a way finding system that intends to elevate bicycle transportation to something more formal and akin to the automobile with the use of designated parking spaces. The reflective finish is consistent with other new high end public works.

Services: Human factors, User research, Graphic design, Product design, Product illustration, 3D form studies, Concept development, CAD surface modeling, Design engineering