Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed - Unreadable on iPhone 6
Funny. On my Samsung I just saw a non-mobile website and zoomed in. So I guess... Samsung > Iphone
This will get so many downvotes...
What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
31–40 of 191 posts
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
For any still not seeing it: The chain stay from the bottom bracket is missing. The rear wheel should be held by a triangular arrangement of the frame, but the side of the triangle that runs parallel to the ground isn’t there
I didn't want to mention what I thought was wrong because I didn't want to accidentally influence anybody else, especially if I wound up wrong. But yeah, after giving it a good, long look, along with his mention that it would break when someone sat on it, I guessed that there should have been a bar between the back wheel and where the pedals are.
That isn't the only thing wrong. If you brace the back wheel, the fore tube still has a single point of attachment, and the front wheel would tend to flex forward, encouraging the weld between the rising forward diagonal of the triangle and the fore tube to break.
It might not break right when someone sat on it, but after stresses accumulate from riding over bumps, the front portion is going to break off and pitch the rider forward into the pavement.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#33I'm looking at the third one down and wondering: why aren't all-wheel-drive bikes a thing? (Well, steering...) I guess there is such a thing: http://christinibicycles.com/ – sounds pretty complicated: 'A handlebar-mounted switch controls the AWD “shift on the fly” clutch. When the clutch is engaged, the rear spiral gear interlocks with the rear hub and power is transferred via internal shafts to the forward spiral ge…
My electrib bike is AWD. Electric in the front and mechanical in the back. Very good for recovery on a patch of ice, impossible with just back wheel drive.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#34Drawing 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…
At least for me, the mechanical skill with the pencil does hold me back for non-organic shapes. I have trouble sketching things I can see clearly, but its not significantly harder for things I am only familiar with. For example, if I tried to sketch my bike, I would have no trouble getting the structure correct, but I would have trouble getting smooth wheels.
You don't have to draw freehand. A t-square, a pair of compasses and a set of French curves are pretty much essential if you want to accurately draw precise geometric forms.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#35Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#36Drawing 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
I strongly disagree. Try drawing a large shape without using a template. If you move the pencil with your fingers, you quickly run out of range of motion, and have to reposition your hand and join the new line segment without visible discontinuity, which requires extreme accuracy[0]. If you move it mostly with your arm then you have to learn the difficult and unnatural skill of fine motor control using large muscles. In practice the only good option is using a combination of both, which requires great coordination. The visual part is easy after you learn a few simple tricks like looking at negative space. The mechanical skills are the difficult part.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ask people to draw the powertrain or running gear of a car and you'd get much the same result.
Is that a good comparison? How often does the average person actually see either of those things? The reason it's surprising that people struggle to draw bikes from memory is that most of us see them all the time.
The brain doesn't work like a photo camera. It remembers strictly the minimum required to do it's job, in a highly abstract and compressed form.
How a bike fits together it's kind of irrelevant for most people, even if you ride one or if you must dodge one.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#38If you scroll down, the designer has produced images that match some of the ideas from the sketches. They are beautiful and mesmerizing. At first I thought he had actually built out the physical bicycles from the sketches, but it turns out they are just computer renderings. Nonetheless it shows the power of "mistake" driven design, to generate novel ideas.
They're not even renderings of 3D models; they're all done in Photoshop! I'm impressed with what can be done with an image editor to create new shapes out of thin air.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#39Drawing 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 I strongly disagree. Try drawing a large shape without using a template. If you move the pencil with your fingers, you quickly run out of range of motion, and have to reposition your hand and join the new line segment without visible discontinuity, which requires extreme accuracy[0]. If you move it mostly with your arm then you have to lea…
[deleted]
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#40Drawing 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…
> A bicycle is an incredibly simple visual form
I disagree, compared with most objects a human daily interacts with - doors, furniture, lifts, cars - a bicycle is one of the most complex visible forms. I'm talking about what can be seen from outside, since obviously a car is much more complex on the inside.
Most of the stuff we deal with is composed of square/boxes and circle/tubes. Triangular shapes are quite rare in human spaces (I don't have any in my house), and the bicycle critically has two triangles at it's core. Chains are also very rare. So I don't think it's a surprise that many struggle with the core - two triangles and a chain.