The Cycling Commuter

V-Day

sarahdrummond — Wed, 20 May 2009 07:11:13 +0000

I’m just off to Art school now to do my ‘Viva’. It’s a large part of my final year grade. you get 10 minutes to present the concept including where you came from, what you set out to do, then ten minutes of questions which help to define why you made your decisions.

I’ve posted an unnarated version of my presentation. That’s 10 weeks of hard work right there. Enjoy.

Nearly Over

sarahdrummond — Tue, 19 May 2009 05:39:42 +0000

Well the project is over in 12 hours, 7 minutes and so many seconds.

I’ve been up all night struggling to get some of the nitty gritty work done and get rid of mistakes that I keep finding, spelling, unaligned things. I’m moving on, edit stage. Done most of the leg work for that anyway so hopefully I can be finished by early afternoon and go home sleep, practice and sleep again. Here’s some images so far.

Testing video sizes

sarahdrummond — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:15:12 +0000

I’ve hit a spot of bother with file sizes in pts. Driving me crazy, because the film I took is smaller than the interfaces…and I don’t want to lose quality on the interfaces.

Here’s a tester for the iphone interface which will be used by tourists. It shows the story of a tourist who has downloaded the cog application from a stand and built up a journey. They can follow themselves and most importantly find their way along the route. It also signals when there are other tourist destinations nearby or points of interest on the way.

New web interface

sarahdrummond — Sun, 17 May 2009 02:55:05 +0000

The nights are getting longer, and I’m slightly worried about time now. The interfaces are taking me longer than expected, yet they are the most important. Here’s some new screen shots (unspellchecked) of the first cog webpage, and some quick renders of the cog stand in context with some of the pictures I took on the film shoots from mid week.

I wanted to include on the first page a short film on how the service works, and 5 easy steps on how to attain a card and use the system. I also want to encourage the online touchpoint of web to capture the essence of the cycling community and therefore have made the applications like sharing and building journeys free so that existing cyclists can ‘hand over’ their knowledge and novice cyclists can become inspired.

Edit Edit Edit

sarahdrummond — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:04:12 +0000

Here’s a couple of clips from yesterdays filming. It might not look great but with some clever editing it will be believable.

Film prototype

sarahdrummond — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:09:49 +0000

Wow, it’s 22:40 and I’m just back in the studio, it’s been a long few days. I’ve been building a prototype bike to use as a prop in the films I’ve been doing. I’ve decided to use films to get across my service proposal. In this case, there is a lot of information to convey and I felt that the best way to get it across is through stories of different user types using the rental scheme, being careful to make sure that I cover the different types of touchpoints. I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped over the last couple of days, and put up with being pushed down hills because the bike gave up on us! Especially Mike who I feel risked his life today to get some on road shots. Also for those who put up with pointing at non existing screens and got some funny looks.

I’m looking forward to getting this edited and put together. The last 10 weeks have been tough, and at times I’ve felt I would never be able to pull all this together but with a bit of hard editing and rendering over the weekend, with some indesign and guides thrown in, by Wednesday this will be over! I’ll leave with some images of the last couple days…

Welding

sarahdrummond — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:32:06 +0000

Spent majority of today constructing mock up bike to appear in the film. Its not perfect, but from a far it will do. Going to finish spraying it up tomorrow so I can add the logo and touch up all the bits I messed up. Quick Pecha Kucha tomorrow so need to prepare something for that but mostly working on whats scenes and where I will be filming tomorrow.

Grinding

sarahdrummond — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:32:22 +0000

Been grinding all the paint work off the frame so I can weld on an inner plate and back hoop to the bike to make it ‘look’ like a rental bicycle. Dirty work! I’m a huge time optimist, so I’m hoping to get the work finished today, will post photos as the bike takes shape.

Getting there

sarahdrummond — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:06:34 +0000

Late night post but getting there, can’t wait for the computer model to be finished. You think you’re done then you find something else that needs doing. Working on real model today, mocking up a quick replica to put into the film. Funny thing is it doesn’t actually work so we’re going to use film magic to make it believable, wait and see.

Modelling Cog

sarahdrummond — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:41:09 +0000

I’ve finally settled on a model for the touchpoint. What has been difficult about this project is trying to cover a large amount of questions through designing a service for my degree.

I’ve struggled alot with getting bogged down in designing things that technically should be passed on to another designer if I was working in a team, but I have to be careful to be able to visualise things and get them correct so I’ve spent a bit of time this week putting together the stand, making sure its the right height/width and is easy to use.

Here’s a wee hint of what it will be like. Today I will be in the workshop trying to turn a mountain bike into a ‘cog’ bike for the film. Funny thin is, the bike is not able to be cycled, it’s rubbish (that’s why I am thanking common wheel for their donation of scrap bikes) so going to have to use some great trickery.