Direction of the Project – Enhancing the Cycling Experience

Teaming Up With Romit

As my research unfolded, I began to perceive a harmonious convergence between our perspectives of senses, realising that they could complement each other.

Adding another mind to challenge my methods, question my readings, and contribute to the crafting process felt beneficial. It also became evident that sustaining the project’s momentum would require collaborative effort, given the time constraints I am and would be facing.

See our initial research questions considered (PDF 53KB).

Own Research Direction

How to implement key principles of the somatics field in cycling to elevate the enjoyment of the experience?

Brainstorming

• expressing the body movement through light
• influencing the view of the cyclist based on their body factors such as heart rate or breathing
• using a camera to warn the cyclist through animal-like features (frog lungs) to warn him of dangers behind him.

Cycling in London

To generate understanding on the roads we took several routes within the city by being observant of challenges and context on the road.

First-person Experience

Design

To document all the details, I decided to do it during the experience as due to the demanding focus of the activity, I will not be able to recall all of it. Given my familiarity with the route, I felt confident in maintaining safety while simultaneously verbalising my observations, both external and internal, during the journey.

Highlight Data

The initial cycle observations focused more on external objects such as signs, lights, road users, and their behaviours. However, in the second one at the end of the same day, I began to pay more attention to my internal feelings.

For instance, when I belatedly spotted a car and had to slam on the brakes, I experienced a warm sensation that travelled from my fingertips down to my arms, gradually diminishing in intensity. On another occasion, I sensed a warmth in my gut when I attempted to overtake an oncoming car to avoid hindering its path.

Prototype

While crafting this mechanical low-fidelity prototype, I drew inspiration from the work of Beuthel and Wilde (2017), who explored the concept of conveying implicit information derived from personal experiences to foster greater empathy among others.

Upon reflection, my prototype aspired to convey something exceptionally sporadic and context-specific, in contrast to the illustrated examples in (Beuthel and Wilde, 2017), which revolved around health condition states, seemingly independent of context. Consequently, my prototype appeared to be more of a singular statement with no potential for further expansion.

References

Beuthel, J.M. and Wilde, D. (2017) ‘Wear.x’, Proceedings of the
2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems [Preprint].
doi:10.1145/3064663.3064799.