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

http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html

by dlazar • 8 years ago

566 187 8 years ago

gianlucagimini.it

phendrenad2• 8 years ago

I’ve never seen a less mobile-friendly layout. Fixed decorative elements on the page forcefully covering content.

monkpit• 8 years ago

Agreed - Unreadable on iPhone 6

adrianhel2• 8 years ago

Funny. On my Samsung I just saw a non-mobile website and zoomed in.

So I guess...

Samsung > Iphone

erikbye• 8 years ago

Safari's Reader Mode.

duderific2• 8 years ago

He's a product designer, probably not so worried about people looking on their phones.

whatsstolat• 8 years ago

I resorted to outline.com for this one. Something I usually reserve for autoplay video sites and paywalls.

bena2• 8 years ago

I had to go look up pictures of actual bikes to confirm what (I think) is wrong with the lead picture.

I also wonder how I would have done in the blind.

rcfox• 8 years ago

After looking at all of those pictures, I did a Google image search for "bicycle", and now I think I'm experiencing the visual equivalent of semantic satiation. None of these images look correct...

garrettgrimsley• 8 years ago

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

bena2• 8 years ago

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.

gascan• 8 years ago

Finding that particular omission just feels like visual trickery, rather than anything to do with knowing how a bike works.

Like any number of puzzle books that include a "find the missing X!" and friends.

sampo• 8 years ago

The single joint between the down tube and the head tube is probably not mechanically very strong, either.

Johnythree• 8 years ago

Plus the front forks are straight.

eg they have "Rake", but no offset, so the amount of "Trail" or "Castor" will be incorrect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_geometr...

komali2• 8 years ago

After googling bicycles, seems to me like the common shape is "diamond with a line dividing the two triangles (bicycle seat thingy) and a line coming off the top vertex (front wheel holder thingy), I'm gonna try to remember that and draw a bicycle later after the memory has faded.

pasta• 8 years ago

In Firefox I had to go to readability mode for it to see, but the idea and execution is great!

Reminds me of the company that creates dolls how you design them: https://www.childsown.com/

akhleung• 8 years ago

Heh, when I was a kid I used to draw a lot, and I remember being bothered that I didn't know how to draw a bike, so back then I explicitly memorized the shapes (parallelogram in the back, and another line for the front wheels). Wonder if that's common for doodlers.

notatoad• 8 years ago

A parallelogram is missing the seat tube, which is a fairly important part of the bike.

jdietrich10• 8 years ago

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've looked, but they haven't understood its form, they haven't decomposed it into lines and shapes. They know that it has two wheels, a chain, a saddle and some handlebars, but they've never actually noticed the shapes that join them together.

https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/d...

thethirdone• 8 years ago

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.

jdietrich10• 8 years ago

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.

mrob2• 8 years ago

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernier_acuity

jdietrich10• 8 years ago

Completely untrained people can trace a drawing with a good degree of accuracy, yet fail completely to draw even simple forms with any degree of verisimilitude.

Teachers like Betty Edwards and Bert Dodson have proven that pretty much anyone can learn to draw to a high standard in a remarkably short space of time once they understand the visual principles of effective drawing. Mastering draftsmanship requires a lifetime of practice, but competence can be achieved in a matter of days with the right instruction.

213• 8 years ago

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.

jdietrich10• 8 years ago

Clench your fist. Take a moment to notice the complexity of the geometry. Consider how you might reduce that shape to simple geometric forms. Consider how you might represent the three-dimensional form as a set of two-dimensional lines. Turn your hand around and look at it from a different angle. Open your fist and make an "OK" or a "peace" sign.

Go to your refrigerator and take out a lettuce leaf or a piece of broccoli. Look out of your window at a tree or a bush. Go to your bathroom and look at the toilet or the faucet. Look in the mirror and make a funny face.

A bicycle is more complicated than many rectilinear man-made objects, but it's a relatively straightforward collection of lines. Even the drawings in the linked article with their horribly mangled geometry are immediately recognisable as a bicycle. It's not a difficult thing to draw, relatively speaking.

dylan604• 8 years ago

Triangular shapes are quite rare in human spaces Not a football fan, eh? Triangles are the essential building block for breaking down defenses. </bad_joke>

As for what you actually meant, triangles (and other variations of 3) play a very import role in visual design. Admittedly, these might not be obvious to most. I know you really meant physical items. However, it might be a style of design of a more modern era. I have a glass coffee table that has a triangular raised extension, from the 50s I believe. I also have a round two tier table, built by my grandfather in the 50s as well. The top tier sits on an X shaped pier with 90 degree notches cut out of the verticals leaving a very distinct triangular shape, plus the gaps of the X shape as well. Just from memory, the cars from the 50s had lots of triangular shapes/markings, specifically thinking of the fins. I wonder why the triangle seems to have fallen out of favor?

gowld4• 8 years ago

Even for cars, it's hard to get the relative positions of wheels and windows and the hood right on the first try.

jrd259• 8 years ago

Triangular shapes are quite rare in human spaces (I don't have any in my house)

Triangles are essential in low-weight rigid structures. Look at any exposed steel construction around you (a bridge, perhaps) and you will see many triangles. The utility poles and streetlights in my neighbourhood use triangles. Unless your house has a flat root, the upper most floor is likely composed of triangles (called trusses) that you can't see because they are hidden. (They would be easy to spot in barn.) Even the desk I am sitting at now has triangles to ensure the legs don't collapse if the desk is shoved sideways. If you happen to live in a seismically active place, you would likely see triangular bracing on many buildings. And finally if you (or your kids) have even done one of those engineering challenges in school where you have to make a tall, load-bearing and light-weight structure on a budget you likely used triangles. Triangles are everywhere, if you learn to see them.

And as for the main point of this post - one reason to learn to draw is that it forces you to really see what you are drawing. Drawing from your imagination is no substitute.

eitally• 8 years ago

If you Google "learning how to see [like an artist]" type of queries, you'll find lots of useful information, like this:

http://www.learning-to-see.co.uk/negative-shapes-design

Someone• 8 years ago

”The mechanical skills of wielding a pencil or mixing paint are almost trivial”

Trivial? Painting a single shape everybody knows got Giotto a job (http://theorbitbrown.com/site/the-perfect-circle/)

There are huge differences between humans in drawing ability and training.

But yes, in the case of these drawings, it seems the main difference is that many people apparently have never looked at a bicycle frame. I expect that to be somewhat different in countries where bicycles and people repairing their own bicycles are more common.

jdietrich10• 8 years ago

The Giotto story is almost certainly a myth. It's also largely irrelevant; anyone can draw a perfect circle in two seconds with a pair of compasses or a piece of string.

There are huge differences in drawing ability, but going from "I can't draw" to "I can draw quite well" takes days, not years. Becoming a confident and capable draftsman is a skill that anyone can learn to a surprisingly high degree of proficiency in a remarkably small amount of time. Most of us won't become Albrecht Dürer, but we all have the innate capacity to draw well if we simply understand the process.

framebit3• 8 years ago

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 thinking.

sedeki• 8 years ago

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?

MrFantastic• 8 years ago

If you understand how a bicycle works it's easy to draw. Most people don't care to understand things on a deeper level.

xkcd-sucks• 8 years ago

Uh if you take the time to imagine pedaling a bicycle and turning the handlebars it's easy to draw. Even people that understand bikes probably default to a visual representation rather than a "mechanical" representation because they're confident in their visual memory

golem14• 8 years ago

As Sherlock Holmes would say to Dr. Watson: "You see, but you don't observe".

So I quite agree with you - but it feels surprising that so many people just don't do any validation of their model in their head. _How_ the author was asking to draw the bicycle probably mattered. E.g. "immediately draw me a men’s bicycle, by heart" vs: "think about how a bicycle actually works and draw that".

BTW - In all honesty, it took me, too, a second to spot what was missing on the first picture.

white-flame• 8 years ago

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. :-)

Fnoord• 8 years ago

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.

userbinator2• 8 years ago

It would be interesting to split the respondents into two groups, one who rides bikes regularly and one who doesn't, and compare the results.

The "2WD" ones are particularly perplexing.

On the other hand, I bet if you asked people to draw a car, 99% of them would draw something realistic --- it's the arrangement of the frame tubes on a bike that most people just haven't looked at in detail or remembered.

huphtur• 8 years ago

Pro cyclists asked to draw a bike in 15 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU

gnicholas• 8 years ago

Wonder how their mechanics would have done.

I think the only reason I could draw a bike with any accuracy is because my dad taught me how to fix it. Otherwise it would be a complete black box.

lucb1e4• 8 years ago

Results visible at 0:55, 1:16, 1:52, 2:15 (correct), 2:41 (badly visible), 3:04 (proportions wrong in a way that doesn't work anymore, but somewhat correct), 3:29, 3:59, 4:21 (correct), and 5:03 (mostly correct, might have been correct if he had taken the time to properly connect the line to the point instead of slightly next to it).

grkvlt• 8 years ago

This is exactly what was done in the paper[0] the drawings came from. And, actually, it was the chain of the bike, not the frame, that had most errors. The results are also broken down by gender, and are interesting. For male non-cyclists the error rate was about half that of female non-cyclists. For cyclists, the males had almost zero errors but female error rates were pretty much unchanged (the chain position errors dropped, but were still higher than male non-cyclists).

This (probably?) says a lot about the way men and women think...

0. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/cycleweb.html

mango7283• 8 years ago

I'll bet many of said cars will end up not really having the right proportions for the internals or correct door placement. It will be recognizable as a car, sure.

Getting into the weeds a bit we see this more obviously with drawings of tanks, ships and planes that aren't drawn with a reference to a real one - guns too big to fit inside the turret, the turrets themselves being way too big, no consideration for where the engine must be etc.

jonshariat2• 8 years ago

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 exercise could help use fine tune ML patterns.

213• 8 years ago

I agree, but I also wonder how much motivation is a factor.

What would happen if the author said after the first drawing: "this bicycle is terrible and this bike would never work. Take this seriously, think about the mechanics of it, and I will pay you 1000 dollars if you get it correct"

As in, these pictures are just raw memory dumps, with minimal cognitive filtering. When stakes are higher, cognition should kick in and fix lower level errors.

pwg• 8 years ago

I think this is a great example that shows how our brains remember/recognize things.

It may also have much to do with 'who' was asked. As an Engineer, I immediately noticed the missing frame member on the first rendering image at the very top of the web page. But, most people one would meet 'on the street' are not Engineers, and they very likely do not even look at a bike with a 'how does this work' eye. And if one does not even try to 'analyze' the bike mechanism, even a little, one surely will never remember the constituent parts.

edgarvaldes• 8 years ago

I think it's funny how many comments give great importance to the object being a bicycle or the person being a bike rider to explain the output.

jonshariat2• 8 years ago

Agreed. It can really be anything. People don't look at things, they scan and store/recognize optimized patterns.

swaggyBoatswain2• 8 years ago

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

lev992• 8 years ago

There seems to be two things tested in this exercise. Technical drawing capabilities and knowledge of bicycle mechanics.

I assume most people that drew bicycles have ridden one, but there are a few basic common mistakes. The location of the pedals (closer to rear wheel, very near to floor), the way the chain operate, and the triangle frame are some examples. I did not notice anyone drawing details around the gear mechanisms nor the breaks. Many people demonstrated acceptable drawing technique while getting mechanical details of the bicycle incorrect.

I think this exercise highlights a great amount of ignorance around bicycles. I purpose society would benefit from better bicycle education. Better bicycle education might encourage bicycle adoption (needs testing to verify), and bicycle ridership improves climate change, obesity, traffic, and heart disease. In addition to increased adoption, bicycle education would improve bicycle safety.

Bicycle education as a semester long optional course in high school is a great reach goal. It could mirror driver education where teenagers learn traffic rules and laws, and also basic bicycle maintenance. Perhaps with enough active bicycle riding time it could count as a Physical Education credit.

A good first step would be more high quality videos and pamphlets on the topic of bicycle education.

jschwartzi• 8 years ago

Ask people to draw the powertrain or running gear of a car and you'd get much the same result.

Buldak• 8 years ago

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.

userbinator2• 8 years ago

That would probably be worse. At least the weird contraptions they drew are (even if only vaguely) recognisable as a bicycle.

This also raises the question of what you'd get if you asked drivers to draw what they see when they're sitting in the driver's seat.

namenotrequired• 8 years ago

I had a mandatory subject on traffic in primary school in Holland, and it was largely about cycling.

Vinnl2• 8 years ago

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 bicycle education. Most children here get a few lessons at primary school and do an informal exam, and that's it. The primary reason for that being enough is, again, safe infrastructure.

roymurdock• 8 years ago

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, and with the speed some mopeds are going it could be very ugly

lucb1e4• 8 years ago

There seems to be two things tested in this exercise. Technical drawing capabilities and knowledge of bicycle mechanics.

A lot of people here are saying that drawing is part of the challenge. I very much doubt it.

My drawing skills, including technical drawing skills, are terrible. You should have seen me yesterday when I was looking at an apartment where the owner didn't have a floor plan and I tried to sketch one without a ruler.

However, I tried and can draw a bike that works just fine. Maybe it's because I'm Dutch or because I used to be into BMX biking (when I was 9-14 years old) so I looked at more bikes than the average person on planet earth, but I was surprised when friends also couldn't draw one properly. I guess I am just one of a few who ever paid enough attention to the construction to get it right?

In any case, my drawing is absolutely awful. Out of a class of 30 in high school, I was the only one who the teacher just gave a passing grade out of pity. Most others couldn't draw amazingly either, but it was passable. Mine wasn't. But I got a passing grade because the teacher clearly saw that I tried and paid attention to his instructions.

I do not think that drawing skills have anything to do with connecting the lines to the right places. Even if it's misshapen and out of proportions, the lines that make up the bike should still connect to the right points.

lev992• 8 years ago

Missing the basic triangle frame or connecting the chain to the front wheels are clearly not caused by poor drawing skills.

tabtab2• 8 years ago

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's good to know how to lubricate, maintain, and inspect a bicycle, but even such an education won't necessarily make one remember the physical location of all the parts from raw memory.

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. But this is probably a one in a million event such that it's not worth hours of education to prevent. It's like meteor insurance. People tend to skip inspections out of laziness anyhow, even if trained.

azernik• 8 years ago

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 failure (pedal getting stuck or breaking loose).

The more important skill for dealing with those is not memorizing the geometric structure of the frame, but knowing how to recognize early signs of wear (creaking in the frame, visible spreading hairline cracks, clicking when turning the pedals, etc.) Sidenote: This is a big drawback of carbon fiber composite bicycle parts - they're stronger per weight than metal, but they don't give a lot of warning before failing and said failures are usually more catastrophic (shattering rather than bending - see [1] for a video, and [2] for a more general discussion of the market for lemons that this creates).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxfJ-upYUXQ - note that this is a cheap part, so snapped under relatively low amounts of wear and force, but it was harder for the rider to realize this through inspection and riding before catastrophic failure

[2] https://www.outsideonline.com/2311816/carbon-fiber-bike-acci...

pure-awesome• 8 years ago

I read this as satire commenting on the misguided educational policies that governments tend to adopt.

The other commenters, however, have responded to it in earnest.

I am curious as to the original intent?

jvagner• 8 years ago

To extend this a bit...

If you like watching any of the popular Gym Fail video channels on Youtube -- many people also have poor, or counter- intuitive notions of things like purpose built machines and the physical body mechanics/physics that marry up to them.

Recall is hard, but so is.. deciphering.

logfromblammo3• 8 years ago

I thought it was interesting how many of the wrong designs were similar to the lead image, with one central triangle and all other elements sprouting from it. It's tantalizingly close to the "standard" design, yet still incorrect.

I wonder how many of those people would insist that their sketch is correct, even when confronted with the evidence of an actual bicycle for comparison...

duderific2• 8 years ago

If 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.

skykooler2• 8 years ago

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.

atourgates3• 8 years ago

As odd at is - this[1] design has a couple elements that have been reproduced in the real world.

While the exact 2wd system shown in the rendering would have some real issues, 2wd mountain bike systems do exist. They can rely on impressively strange chain routing[2], a system of gears and internal shafts[3], or just an electric hub[4] (which is admittedly, not really the same thing).

As far as the one-sided frame goes, Canondale makes a one-sided fork called the Lefty[5], that's in mass production and reasonably popular. One-sided rear triangles only seem to exist on motorcycles, and there's an interesting discussion here[6] on why that's the case, with an example of a one-off "righty" bicycle.

[1] http://www.gianlucagimini.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Gian...

[2] https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-gear/all-wheel-drive-m...

[3] http://christinibicycles.com/

[4] https://newatlas.com/easy-motion-evo-awd-big-bud-ebike/54434...

[5] https://www.cannondale.com/en/International/Innovation/lefty...

[6] http://forums.mtbr.com/general-discussion/why-dont-we-have-l...

dirtyaura• 8 years ago

I didn’t know about 2WD bikes existed! I’d love to try out to experience how it feels to drive 2WD.

The Lefty design also looks very interesting, do you have practical experience with it?

What an amazing comment full of new eye-opening information for me, thanks

salty_biscuits3• 8 years ago

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 weight benefits for telescopic forks. On motorcycles a single sided swing arm has the same issues, but at least there is a practical benefit when you need to change a tyre quickly.

lmm3• 8 years ago

I have a Strida ( http://www.strida.com/ ) which is one-sided on each wheel. It rides just like a regular bike, and means you don't have to take the wheel off to change a tube.

iforgotpassword• 8 years ago

That was the best part. When I just looked at the 50 drawings I sure noticed that most of them had something wrong, but at the same time my brain seems to have corrected what I'm seeing; "yep it's a bike alright"

But then seeing these detailed, realistic takes on the drawings suddenly made it so absurd. I lost it at a couple of them and I'm wondering how the author was doing while making them.

okmokmz2• 8 years ago

I wonder why such a high percentage of females attached the chain the the front wheel in their drawings

edit: a better way to phrase it would probably be: Of the drawings where the chain was attached to the front wheel, I wonder why such a large majority were done by females

hermitdev• 8 years ago

I was surprised at the number of drawings that connected the front & rear wheels directly. I'm sure those would be fun to ride...

Also the number of bikes that were just structurally unsound, such as just the seat-stay attached to the rear wheel. Quite likely first bump you hit, things would not end well (if it even took that long). I'm not a mechanical engineer, but I did take a single class on statics in college, and that's enough for me to see that things would not end well (at least with current materials I'm aware of).

okmokmz2• 8 years ago

Agreed, some of the frames were surprising and quite funny. I've never ridden a bike professionally, or even as a serious hobby, but I would've guessed that way more people would at least get the general frame shape of a rhombus with 2 connected corners and the fork coming down from the front edge.

gameswithgo2• 8 years ago

real bikes exist with just a seat stay, and with just a chain stay, and they work fine.

of course the stays are beefed up in these cases.

jshevek6• 8 years ago

I was wondering the same thing. It would be nice if he also asked for people's experience with riding bikes, and compared all three factors (gender, experience, chain attachment). I'm wondering if there is a relationship between experience with riding bikes and this non-standard design

Edit: And age. Did all of the front attachers cluster in a particular age range as well?

keypress2• 8 years ago

That's odd I noticed this on some vector art just two minutes before seeing this story.

https://www.cyclotricity.com/uk/custom/mix-match-your-own-co...

keypress2• 8 years ago

Not to mention the magic drive train.

ianbicking2• 8 years ago

I'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 gear set, which drives the CHRISTINI freehub. Due to a slight gearing differential, the front wheel is not actively powered on smooth level ground. However, the moment the rear wheel slips, power is instantaneously transferred to the front wheel. Similarly, the moment that the front wheel decelerates, as in hitting a rock or starting to wash out in a corner, power and traction are transferred to the front wheel.'

Makes me wonder if you could make an electric-assist bike where the assist was on the front wheel, thus saving all the complicated mechanical power transfer. I also suspect driving the front wheel feels crazy on a bike and I just don't realize it.

douchescript2• 8 years ago

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.

ianbicking2• 8 years ago

What does it feel like when you aren't peddling and it's just front-wheel drive?

rhinoceraptor• 8 years ago

I can only imagine how much of a nightmare working on one of those bikes would be. Plus the efficiency losses and extra weight, I don't think AWD bikes will ever be common.

stefan_• 8 years ago

Crucially a front wheel losing traction isn't recoverable. So it has rained, you ride over a bunch of leaves and that is the moment the electric motor decides to apply power, you're going down immediately.

And why in the first place, there is no benefit.

dancek• 8 years ago

Well, that depends. It's easy to lock your front wheel for a split-second on gravel without falling---you just need to keep your balance while the wheel is locked. If there's a certain amount of kinetic friction front wheel drive could even make it possible to recover after balance is lost.

AWD (electric front drive + pedaling) is actually quite common among hobbyists in areas that often have snow (say, Scandinavia). It's as useful as it is for cars.

meej• 8 years ago

Makes me wonder if you could make an electric-assist bike where the assist was on the front wheel, thus saving all the complicated mechanical power transfer.

This exists, it's called the GeoOrbital Wheel. It converts your bike to electric just by swapping out the front wheel. Pedaling is optional, so it's actually more than just an assist, it can operate in a fully electric mode. http://www.geoo.com

I own one and I'm very pleased with it.

There are also a bunch of front wheel e-bike conversion kits on Amazon, last I looked.

pornel• 8 years ago

Reminds of of Character Amnesia[1] phenomenon, where people can forget how to write Chinese/Japanese characters, even though they know how to read them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia

dvh• 8 years ago

I know how to read Mississippi

majewsky• 8 years ago

I know how to read miscellaneous. (Thanks autocomplete.)

framebit3• 8 years ago

I love this project! We got some prints of these for a family member who's a rabid cyclist and also one for our house.

skybrian• 8 years ago

I don't know if he redid this independently or failed to give credit, but here is an article [1] describing some similar experiments done by Rebecca Lawson. And a formal academic paper from 2006 [2].

[1] https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/cycleweb.html

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03195929

kevin_thibedeau• 8 years ago

Some remind me of Pedersen's [1] which look ungainly and structurally unsound too.

[1] http://www.pedersenbicycles.com/

anonytrary• 8 years ago

I find it strange that no one drew the bike projected on a plane other than the plane containing the wheels. No one drew the bike head-on or at an angle.

jshevek6• 8 years ago

I speculate that the author created an expectation of a "quick, simple, sketch". Even an artist might prefer that plane, if they are expected to draw quickly.

chatmasta• 8 years ago

This is like what happens when you ask the client what they want the website to look like.

ada19813• 8 years ago

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

ada19813• 8 years ago

Downvotes apparently!

superkuh• 8 years ago

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.

ada19813• 8 years ago

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

brna• 8 years ago

I bet it would be hard going trough all of these and drawing a bike afterwards.

clojurestan• 8 years ago

These people went ahead and made the mistake bikes[0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU

bunderbunder• 8 years ago

I like this. Even if they wouldn't work, some of the designs are really beautiful when translated into 3D models.

It also sort of reminds me a bit of a minor collection I've been making of children's book illustrations of kites, which started out of a morbid fascination with how, despite how very simple an object a basic diamond kite is, very few of them get all the details right.

ir193• 8 years ago

when our programmer implemented exactly what PM required...LOL

gameswithgo2• 8 years ago

I have done a lot of biking and saw this article a while back. It makes me look closely at every depiction of a bike I see. We have some pillows with bikes on them. I look close and notice the chainring is MONSTER huge, like a 60T. Whoever rides the bike on those pillows is not to be messed with.

colanderman2• 8 years ago

Similar: draw an ant, top-down view.

Where DO the legs go?

jshevek6• 8 years ago

Is this really a common misunderstanding? I thought everybody knew that ants have three body sections, and the legs attached to the middle. We learned this in elementary school. Putting legs on the head or the back section would create so many unnecessary complications.

lucb1e4• 8 years ago

I know because I did a presentation on ants in high school (or was it primary school, hmm), but I'm not sure how common knowledge that is. Unless you're a biologist it's also completely irrelevant to know -- and even then, I can imagine depending on your exact job, it might still be irrelevant.

colanderman2• 8 years ago

Putting legs on the head or the back section would create so many unnecessary complications.

I mean, so would attaching a bicycle chain to the front wheel.

After all, why shouldn't an ant have one pair attached to its tail segment? 6 is a lot of legs to cram into the tiny middle segment.

I first partook in this exercise in a small group of STEM graduate students preparing for a youth teaching program. Maybe 2/3 of us got it wrong (myself included).

ThJ• 8 years ago

I won't get the answer to that question, it seems, because their site doesn't work properly on mobile...

baddox4• 8 years ago

Little I knew this is actually a test that psychologists use to demonstrate how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t.

This seems like a leap, or at least an oversimplification of what the author is referring to in psychology. I’m convinced that my attempt to draw a bicycle would be quite terrible, but I’m also convinced that I would be able to look at my drawing and judge it as terrible.

comboy• 8 years ago

Most people don't do this check though.

wuliwong• 8 years ago

This made me smile. I'm actually somewhat skilled as an artist (just compared to the average person) but I can assure you I have never drawn a respectable image of a bicycle. I really liked taking these sketches and making them more realistic. Maybe there is some genius hidden in these seemingly inaccurate sketches?

toomanybeersies• 8 years ago

I'd be interested to see this broken down by country. Do Dutch or Danish people draw more correct bicycles than Americans?

Another interesting thing would be to see if there's any reason why people draw bikes facing left or right. I feel like for me it's natural to draw vehicles facing right, so they'd drive in the direction that you read in. It seems that most of the drawings here are in the opposite direction. The cycle lane signs in New Zealand also face to the left [1].

[1] https://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/traffic-control-devices-m...

caf• 8 years ago

S02E06 of Brain Games asks a university class to do this - then they build each of the drawn bikes and attempt to ride them.

lesss365• 8 years ago

Funny, this is RISD's infamous application requirement.

YeGoblynQueenne• 8 years ago

> Some diversities are gender driven. Nearly 90% of drawings in which the chain is attached to the front wheel (or both to the front and the rear) were made by females.

It would be more interesting to know what percentage of drawings had the chain attached incorrectly, first- then how many of them were by female participants. If it was just a couple of drawings, there's not much "gender driven diversity" to speak of. Equally for the overcomplicated frames drawn by males, of course.

(Edit: I'm sorry to pick on such an irrelevant detail of this beautiful posting, but at this point anything that seems to allude to stereotypes about females not being comfortable with the function of complex mechanisms, grates; especially if it's using numbers to make a point).

Dylan168073• 8 years ago

I'm curious about more numbers, too, but even if it's 1 vs. 7 I think it's worth noting.

visarga• 8 years ago

All the while we're still looking down on GANs. AI has surpassed average human level in this domain.

theshadowknows• 8 years ago

So what’s wrong with the bike?

slesslytall• 8 years ago

It's missing the part of the frame connecting the rear wheel's axel to the that of the pedals, often referred to as the "chain stay". Without this the seat stay (rear forks) would snap under the rider's weight.

staz• 8 years ago

missing a metal bar behind the chain

C4stor• 8 years ago

If I sum up : a guy "pesters" (good way to make sure people do a bad job !) a lot of people to draw a bike, selects the 50 most flawed drawings, and HN commenters conclude "people are bad at drawing bikes"?

The experimental process is flawed on so many levels I'm amazed anyone is jumping to a conclusion besides "That's some funny looking bikes here!". Something the author reckons by refraining to conclude anything himself.

balabaster• 8 years ago

These are somewhat amusing, but I'd have to say that if you asked a bike tech or anyone that spent any amount of time being their own bike mechanic, even with a very limited amount of artistic talent, there's virtually nothing to drawing a bike that would function adequately in the real world.

mzzter• 8 years ago

When I applied to art school, I had to draw a bicycle as part of the admission evaluation. My peers would post their admission submissions online whether or not they were eventually admitted. If you search “RISD bicycle drawings”, you’ll see tons of bicycle drawings. They range from insanely photorealistic to simply abstract.

Obviously, we all used reference material to make sure our depiction was accurate. But it is nonetheless interesting to see what people come up with when trying to impress an art school admissions team.

swaggyBoatswain2• 8 years ago

reminds me of this meme that gets featured on reddit r/programmerhumor fairly often

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/5fyv4r/kir...

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

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