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What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

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Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#181

Post by white-flame »

jdietrich wrote: post #7

Drawing and painting is almost entirely a visual skill. The mechanical skills of wielding a pencil or mixing paint are almost trivial; the hard part is being able to see what's actually there. A bicycle is an incredibly simple visual form. You can doodle one in about five seconds. They're not rare or unusual objects and they're relatively homogenous. Nonetheless, most people have never actually seen a bicycle. They'v…

> The mechanical skills of wielding a pencil or mixing paint are almost trivial; the hard part is being able to see what's actually there.

Cool, now draw a picture of a hand wielding a pencil. :-)

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#182

Post by framebit »

sedeki wrote: post #82
framebit wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain is an astonishing book that revolutionized my own artistic practice. The simple but difficult emphasis on drawing what actually see and not what you think you see takes real presence and mindfulness to master. I would recommend this book to anybody interested in art. Even if you don't go through the exercises, the principles in there can really inform different ways of thinkin…

I went to lessons in the spirit of this book (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain), but I didn’t have the patience. What kind of artist are you if I may ask? Do you think it is of substantial value for an aspiring UI designer starting literally from scratch to focus on learning to draw well?

I'm a painter, mostly oils. I got burned out in the film industry and switched to CS as a career (distributed systems mostly) and then took up painting very seriously on the side as the outlet for my expression.

A million years ago in 7th grade a well-intentioned art teacher tried to lead us through DFTRSOTB and my classmates were having none of it. I remembered a few of the points from that, and then I took a drawing class in college as an elective where DFTRSOTB wasn't used directly but lots of the exercises were clearly derived from it. When I took up painting, I started drawing as a discipline to augment my painting and finally got myself a copy of the book.

I think the book would be of tremendous value to a UI designer, but in a sideways manner. You don't necessarily need to be able to draw and render realistically to do UI design, but the practices and exercises in the book build your ability to dig through layers of your own perception, assumption, and cognitive bias when you're _really_ looking at something. That's a big concept, but this bike project provides a pretty good "for instance" illustration. All the participants drew their mental conception of a bike instead of really looking at and studying a bike and all the components and how they fit together.

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#183

Post by baddox »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #152
baddox wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if I agree with the distinction. Both require you to simplify the actual appearance down to something that will be recognizable. For a bicycle, that’s just a few circles and lines, but skilled artists can draw recognizable faces with the same simple elements.

If you're ten percent off with each bike line, it looks almost perfect. If you're ten percent off with each line while trying to draw a specific person, it won't even resemble them. A caricature is one thing, and might be doable by an average person, but knowing how to do a caricature is a skill all by itself. A portrait is extremely art skill intensive.

I agree with that, but that’s just the difference between drawing a specific person versus drawing any bicycle. I suspect if you wanted to draw a bicycle that was recognizable as a specific type or brand of bicycle, small differences would be important.

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#184

Post by ada1981 »

superkuh wrote: post #166
ada1981 wrote: post #70

What happens when you ask people to make a mobile friendly website?

Most web design has been corrupted by mobile-friendly concepts. It's nice to finally see a site that isn't made crap by giant buttons, whitespace, and thin vertical scroll.

The site just didn’t work on Safari Mobile without a huge bloated menu.

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#185

Post by salty_biscuits »

lmm wrote: post #163
salty_biscuits wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2wd on a bicycle is just plain silly. Weight and friction are such huge disadvantages to overcome. Even on a mountain bike extra traction from the front seems like a very limited benefit. I think Yamaha and Ohlins made a hydraulic motorcycle 2wd prototype. There the loses and weight aren't such a big deal. My understanding was that the extra material you have to add to strengthen the suspension sort of negates any we…

> 2wd on a bicycle is just plain silly. Weight and friction are such huge disadvantages to overcome. Chains are pretty efficient (otherwise we wouldn't use them in the first place) and the weight difference would be tiny for a normal-weight person. If you've ever skidded in rain or ice 2wd seems like it could make sense.

Did you skid from beastly leg power or from braking or cornering though...

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#186

Post by Vinnl »

roymurdock wrote: post #174
Vinnl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think bicycle adoption could be higher than it is in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, I'm quite sure people would have trouble drawing a bicycle over here as well. Really, the primary reason for the high adoption here is proper, safe infrastructure. (Being flat helps, but there are plenty of flat cities around the world that are not seeing as much adoption.) I also don't think you'd need a whole semester of bic…

Was in Amsterdam this past weekend. Nobody wears helmets, even the kids. taxi driver explained that every grows up biking from a very young age. infrastructure is quite good. And driving sucks with the speed traps, tourists, canals, trams, etc. I don't know why they let mopeds/gas scooters cruise in bike lanes right next to the sidewalk. I imagine the vast majority of accidents are some combo of bike/moped/tourist, a…

The government just recently allowed cities to decide whether to allow scooters on the bike lanes or on the main road. Presumably, Amsterdam will soon choose for the latter.

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#188

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

jonshariat wrote: post #10

I think this is a great example that shows how our brains remember/recognize things. (Which may be help in machine learning) This is how people have remembered a bike. 2 wheels, spaced apart Metal connecting Pedal in the middle Seat on top Handlebars connected to the front wheel. The details of how it's connected, where, spacing, etc. Isn't really noted by our brains unless they see/use them often. I wonder if this e…

Wouldn't surprise me but this is already being done by Google Captchas, signposts, and cars.

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#189

Post by tabtab »

azernik wrote: post #157
tabtab wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: this exercise highlights a great amount of ignorance around bicycles. I purpose society would benefit from better bicycle education. You don't have to understand or remember technical details to ride a bike: you just hop on and go (once you learn to ride). It's not like you have to rebuild one every time you hop on: they pretty much stay as they are. Let's not invent problems that are not real problems. Sure, it'…

> I suppose in an extreme case the bar between the peddles and the back tire could just fall off, and a typical rider wouldn't notice it's missing until something bad happens. Even that is quite rare; that bar is an integral (usually welded) part of the frame. More common failure modes for frames are cracks (the tube comes loose in one point, usually close to a weld, and starts flopping around) or bottom bracket fail…

It would be interesting to see a statistical breakdown of the causes typical bicycle failures, including the results (injury, death, etc.)

Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)

#190

Post by Fnoord »

jdietrich wrote: post #7

Drawing and painting is almost entirely a visual skill. The mechanical skills of wielding a pencil or mixing paint are almost trivial; the hard part is being able to see what's actually there. A bicycle is an incredibly simple visual form. You can doodle one in about five seconds. They're not rare or unusual objects and they're relatively homogenous. Nonetheless, most people have never actually seen a bicycle. They'v…

> Nonetheless, most people have never actually seen a bicycle.

This is culture specific. In The Netherlands, kids see bicycles as they grow up. They see children going to elementary school on them, they see them after school, they're an important part of our culture and in large cities they're practically everywhere. Heck, I got brought to kindergarten on... a bicycle. You can be sure as hell any kid of age 4 or higher has seen a bicycle (4 is the age they enter elementary school). In the Catholic area of NL, its very much a tradition that after communion the child gets their own bicycle. IIRC that's around 7 or 8 years. Whether kids (from NL, of whatever age) can draw a bicycle is a different matter, I cannot judge on that one.

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