bike gear grindr proposal

ABSTRACTA new way for people to make sense of the gears on their bikes that will help them enjoy cycling and make the sport more accessible

Ken Byron

INTRODUCTION

The Bike Gear Grindr is an app for mobile devices that lets a cyclist make the most effective use of the gears on their bicycle. Modern bicycles come with many potential gear combinations that let them ride quickly and easily on virtually any terrain they may encounter. But understanding how best to use those gears is not immediately obvious. There are millions of cyclists in the United States alone and many of them may feel intimidated and confused by bikes they are supposed to be enjoying. This app takes away the confusion and makes using the bicycle much easier, especially for those new to cycling. And a mobile app is ideal for this kind of use, cell phones are widely used and there is a growing selection of aftermarket devices that let cyclists attach them to the handlebars of their bikes. The information a cyclist wants can be in front of them and at their fingertips.

THE PROBLEM

Many cyclists have difficulty understanding and using the gears on their bikes. Traditionally, bicycles were called 10-speeds and many cyclists would say they were in in first, second, third or fourth speed all the way up to ten. But this is inaccurate and more importantly it is ineffective as this arbitrary system gives no indication of which gear is suitable for the speed and terrain you are riding on.

One way of illustrating the gears on a bicycle is a spreadsheet called a gear chart. Such a chart for a 22-speed bicycle drivetrain is below.

Chainwheels on the front cranks are along the top and the gear cogs on the back wheel are in rows along the side. Someone new to cycling would likely see a confusing array of numbers. This chart also relies on an esoteric calculation called the gear inch, something new cyclists likely have not heard of.

OUR SOLUTION

The Bike Gear Grindr would replace these inaccessible and ineffective ways of understanding a bicycle drivetrain with any easy to understand chart that looks like what is below.

What you get when you use this app is a color-coded chart that determines how many of the potential gear combinations on the bike are usable and ranks them from hardest to easiest to use. If you are having difficulty pedaling up a hill, this chart tells you how to get an easier gear. One gear combination

will enable a cyclist to travel faster than another one. If you want to speed up, the chart tells you which gear could work for that.

TARGET MARKET

This app has potential for all cyclists. But it is particularly helpful to those new to the sport who often have difficulty understanding how best to use the many gears they can pick from and when they should shift gears. Either way, this represents a lot of people in the United States alone. According to the Outdoor Foundation’s 2019 Outdoor Participation Report, 47,877,000 people in the U.S. rode a bicycle in 2018, which was nearly 16 percent of the population. As you can see in the chart below, that number has increased in the past decade.

These numbers represent a lot of people getting outside and exercising. But it also suggests there may be a lot of people who are confused by the bike they are riding and consequently a potentially big market for the Bike Gear Grindr app.

HOW IT WORKS

Preparing a traditional gear chart can entail making more than 50 calculations, depending on the configuration of the drivetrain. This is a time-consuming process to say the least. The Bike Gear Grindr app does that work for you and gives something you can use in just a few minutes. Users enter the number of teeth on each chainwheel and gear cog, information that often is engraved on the components, pick a wheel size from one of our preselected options and the app, tap an icon and the app gives a chart similar to what is seen above. This app would be for sale on Apple’s app store as well as ones run by Google and other app providers. We also envision this as something bike shops could provide to customers when they purchase a bike as a download from their websites, as it would make the process of explaining gear shifts on a bicycle much easier. Additionally, we think this app would be an attractive thing for bicycle manufacturers to offer customers as something they could download online.

DELIVERABLES

If this proposal is accepted, we will provide the following deliverables:

Research: This will include information on similar apps and programs and how Bike Gear Grindr can successfully compete with them for users.

Information Architecture: An app like this must be simple and we will show how this app executes a complicated process in as few steps as possible.

Wireframes: Renditions of how each screen will look.

Prototype

CONCLUSION

The Bike Gear Grindr is an opportunity for cyclists to make the most use of their bikes, which often are an expensive investment. A common sales pitch to customers is to talk about how many gears a bike model has. The implication often is that if it has more it is a better bike. But that does nothing for effectively using those gears once the customer takes the plunge and buys the bike. This app takes care of that.

It is also an opportunity for the bicycle industry by helping to make bikes accessible and easy to use, which in turn could boost sales. This point is important since bicycle sales in the United States are stagnant. According to the National Bicycle Dealers Association’s report U.S. Bicycle Market 2016, the size of the bike market in this country in 2015 was $6.2 billion. That sounds like a lot, but it also represents only a small increase from a decade previously. There are many challenges to riding a bike in this country. But making bikes easier to use could help get more people on them for transportation and recreation.