exploration
Design for responsibility
To solve the mistreatment of products I needed to find a way to make FairBike feel personal. People have to take care of the product like it is their own. I designed and altered the way the bike was locked, where the lock was mounted, its visual identity and the story of FairBike to improve personal attachment between the environment and the FairBike. This way the FairBike was treated Fair and better accepted by local residents.
concept
The FairBike v1.0
I built the prototype of the FairBike (v1.0) and its exhibition at the Dutch Design Week 2018 in Eindhoven. The visual identity is based on public street furniture, by the use of the Interstate font and reflecting materials. The bike offers surface to sticker, which gives the opportunity to tell the story of the bike and making it owned by its neighbourhood. The bicycle is maintained by a local bike-shop. Giving neighbourhoods a direct point of contact. In this way I altered the FairBike concept so it takes more stakeholders and different situations into account making it better accepted. Resulting in an even more environmentally and socially responsible alternative to bike sharing.
FairBike offers a single point of access for the neighbourhood. This way they can vote on the amount of bikes with a digital voting mechanism.
FairBike stimulates local bike-shops. They can add bikes to the network and maintain them. In this way the system will support the local economy.
The Things Network Lock prototype can be placed on any bike. It automatically generates codes to unlock the bike and send this to the users’ app.
Stickers make room for personalisation, this will tell the story of this particular FairBike. Everyone can add a sticker and be part of this FairBike.