Could this be any worse?

So I figure when core77 puts articles on their main banner on top, those are the creme de la creme. The best. And surely they have been vetted by a top notch editorial board.

So someone, anyone, please explain this mess to me.

Lol, ye of little clickbait faith.

I like the multi-speed cassette without a derailleur. Do you pick the chain off with your fingers and add a link to change gears. :laughing:

Must be the time for bad bikes. Here is another Core77 post that is just as bad. Don’t be heavy or need any seat adjustment and that is just the beginning!

This reminds me of a thread we had a couple years ago about old design that we still love. It’s really hard to innovate on the bicycle without eliminating what makes the design so great. If you change the frame, you have to use exotic materials that increase the cost. If you try to eliminate functions, like rim brakes, gears, you decrease the usability of the bike.

The traditional triangle frame bike with derailleur and rim brakes is an incredible testament to human’s machine making ability. We should appreciate it more.

Also, is it just me of 3D printing used whenever inexperienced designers hit a road block? “How do we put this frame together!?!? 3D printed joints!”

I don’t think the issue here was necessarily the design, just some of the comical and subtle design decisions that were made (like adding brake levers and shifters, but no derailleur and no brakes). I’m all for swoopy carbon fiber tri-bikes and other wacky things. Weird mountain bike suspension configurations are the best.

I had a number of snarky rebuttals to this bike, then looked again, saw it was a student project, and let it slide.
Yes to all the above issues, but I would put myself in their place, and with the need to round up a build kit for this project, if all they had was a geared wheel and shifter levers, maybe you hope someone would overlook that. Sure it could have used a once-over from someone who knows bike details but as a school project it’s ok.
Front page Core77 though? Hmmm maybe not.

And that reminds me why one of my professors told us not to do an ergonomic chair as a student project. 1 student over a semester isn’t enough to do the whole product well. Maybe it would have been better to just concentrate on a frame?

Yeah. There’s a multitude of better fresh designs out there that belong on the Core front page. These two are pretty bad, student work or not.

20 years ago we were all supposed to be riding Y-Foils, what happened?

Geez you picked the worst variant for that photo too. Seatpost hanging out below the frame, no bar-saddle drop, and a TRIPLE with cranks pointing the wrong way and chain on middle ring. My eyes!

I’m sorry, that is only forgivable for a sophomore-year, maybe junior-year project. For those folks I would blame the professor who shouldn’t be assigning such a project.

This epitomizes a solution looking for a problem. On top of that, absolutely no research was done at all. No benchmarking and certainly no customer research. It’s like they rode a bike when they were 8 and haven’t ridden since.

Even if this were a pure aesthetics project, it fails in so many ways it hurts. Proportions all wrong. Colliding forms are all wrong. Finish is all wrong.

Don’t get me wrong. I made plenty of abominations while in school. But I would take what hopefully is the constructive criticism, fix the problems, then add it to the portfolio. I would not show the before as a standalone. And only sometimes would I show a before with an after. That is something I would nail to the professor.

Quill stem! Aluminum Fork! Triple Cross Wheels!

Unfortunately it’s a typical student project.

  1. The designer wanted to make a black and orange bike with a stylized frame from the beginning.
  2. Write up is full of “weeks of research” “customization for every rider” “3D printing”, etc. Yet, they offer no explanation of how it solves those needs successfully.
  3. “It introduces a revolutionary way of looking at personalized transportation systems that can grow and transform with you and your lifestyle.” …yet they only show color variations.
  4. “3d printing as a medium of manufacturing allows users to create on the spot adjustments both quickly and relatively inexpensively.” I want their 3D printing service bureau’s number.
  5. How do you use the “storage compartments”. Do you have to carry a screw driver to take apart the frame?
  6. They talk about storage, modification, diverse needs yet their exploration page only show thumbnails of frames.

Unfortunately, students are used to saying…“we’ll it’s just a student/conceptual project” as a way of avoiding designing the product and just focusing on the aesthetics and flashy renderings.

I realized long ago that these articles are not the best of the best. A lot of times they are simple hyperlinks to the real articles or the writers have no idea what they are writing about. I think they just go by the pretty pictures and regurgitate content that has already been created. Sad.