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What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
- pasta 8y agoIn 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/ https://www.childsown.com/
- phendrenad2 8y agoI’ve never seen a less mobile-friendly layout. Fixed decorative elements on the page forcefully covering content.
- monkpit 8y agoAgreed - Unreadable on iPhone 6
- duderific 8y agoHe's a product designer, probably not so worried about people looking on their phones.
- whatsstolat 8y agoI resorted to outline.com for this one. Something I usually reserve for autoplay video sites and paywalls.
- bena 8y agoI 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 8y agoAfter 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 8y agoFor 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
- gascan 8y agoFinding 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.
- jshevek 8y agoYes, it took me a moment to identify the omission because the chain itself occupies nearly the same space
- sampo 8y agoThe single joint between the down tube and the head tube is probably not mechanically very strong, either.
- bena 8y agoI 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.
- ianbicking 8y agoI'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/ 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.
- douchescript 8y agoMy 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.
- ianbicking 8y agoWhat does it feel like when you aren't peddling and it's just front-wheel drive?
- douchescript 8y agoIt doesn’t drive if no peddling, legal stuff here in sweden.
- rhinoceraptor 8y agoI 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.
- pornel 8y agoReminds 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia
- akhleung 8y agoHeh, 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 8y agoA parallelogram is missing the seat tube, which is a fairly important part of the bike.
- jdietrich 8y agoDrawing 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/dp/1585429201/ https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/d...
- thethirdone 8y agoAt 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.
- jdietrich 8y agoYou 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.
- jacobolus 8y agoThis seems like moving the goalposts. You also don’t have to draw “free eye”. There are plenty of tools you can use like tracing paper, photographic references, coloring books with the lines already drawn, ... None of my illustrator friends use french curves or compasses to do their sketching, and usually even skip using a straightedge, but through practice can make very nice straight lines, right angles, circles, other curved lines, etc. Hand-eye coordination at the level that professionals have takes an incredible amount of training/practice. It’s hard to imagine how you would even disentangle their practice at mental visualization vs. practice at proprioception, etc.
- userbinator 8y agoIt 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 8y agoPro cyclists asked to draw a bike in 15 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU
- gnicholas 8y agoWonder 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.
- lucb1e 8y agoResults 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 8y agoThis 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 https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/cycleweb.html
- jonshariat 8y agoI 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.
- 21 8y agoI 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 8y 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 8y agoI 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.
- jonshariat 8y agoAgreed. It can really be anything. People don't look at things, they scan and store/recognize optimized patterns.
- lev99 8y agoThere 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 8y agoAsk people to draw the powertrain or running gear of a car and you'd get much the same result.
- Buldak 8y agoIs 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.
- 21 8y agoThe brain doesn't work like a photo camera. It remembers strictly the minimum required to do it's job, in a highly abstract and compressed form. How a bike fits together it's kind of irrelevant for most people, even if you ride one or if you must dodge one.
- jvagner 8y agoTo 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.
- logfromblammo 8y agoI 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...
- duderific 8y agoIf 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.
- skykooler 8y agoThey'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.
- atourgates 8y agoAs 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/Gianluca_Gimini-Velocipedia-7.jpg http://www.gianlucagimini.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Gian... [2] https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-gear/all-wheel-drive-mountain-bike-test-ride/ https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-gear/all-wheel-drive-m... [3] http://christinibicycles.com/ http://christinibicycles.com/ [4] https://newatlas.com/easy-motion-evo-awd-big-bud-ebike/54434/ https://newatlas.com/easy-motion-evo-awd-big-bud-ebike/54434... [5] https://www.cannondale.com/en/International/Innovation/lefty.aspx https://www.cannondale.com/en/International/Innovation/lefty... [6] http://forums.mtbr.com/general-discussion/why-dont-we-have-lefty-rear-triangles-yet-1025959.html http://forums.mtbr.com/general-discussion/why-dont-we-have-l...
- dirtyaura 8y agoI 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
- okmokmz 8y agoI 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 8y agoI 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).
- okmokmz 8y agoAgreed, 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.
- gameswithgo 8y agoreal 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.
- jshevek 8y agoI 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?
- keypress 8y agoThat'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-conversion-kit.html https://www.cyclotricity.com/uk/custom/mix-match-your-own-co...
- keypress 8y agoNot to mention the magic drive train.
- framebit 8y agoI 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 8y agoI 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 https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/cycleweb.html [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03195929 https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03195929
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoSome remind me of Pedersen's [1] which look ungainly and structurally unsound too. [1] http://www.pedersenbicycles.com/ http://www.pedersenbicycles.com/
- anonytrary 8y agoI 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.
- jshevek 8y agoI 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 8y agoThis is like what happens when you ask the client what they want the website to look like.
- ada1981 8y agoWhat happens when you ask people to make a mobile friendly website?
- ada1981 8y agoDownvotes apparently!
- superkuh 8y agoMost 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.
- ada1981 8y agoThe site just didn’t work on Safari Mobile without a huge bloated menu.
- brna 8y agoI bet it would be hard going trough all of these and drawing a bike afterwards.
- clojurestan 8y agoThese people went ahead and made the mistake bikes[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU
- bunderbunder 8y agoI 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 8y agowhen our programmer implemented exactly what PM required...LOL
- gameswithgo 8y agoI 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.
- colanderman 8y agoSimilar: draw an ant, top-down view. Where DO the legs go?
- jshevek 8y agoIs 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.
- lucb1e 8y agoI 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.
- jshevek 8y agoI agree that the fact "legs attached to midsection" is irrelevant to most, but the implications that follow rely on principles of mechanics and biology for which I would still hope most people would have at least a basic intuitive understanding. This is an extreme example to illustrate the point: I don't know exactly how preindustrial people around the world built their homes, but whenever they used large leaves, I would expect them to orient them in the direction that best sheds water. We can make good guesses at specific facts based on principles. I would expect most people to get the ant legs correct. One might say that this bicycle sketch test proves otherwise, but there are far more unique components in the bike sketch.
- colanderman 8y 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 8y agoI won't get the answer to that question, it seems, because their site doesn't work properly on mobile...
- baddox 8y 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 8y agoMost people don't do this check though.
- wuliwong 8y agoThis 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 8y agoI'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-manual/sign-specifications/view/54 https://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/traffic-control-devices-m...
- caf 8y agoS02E06 of Brain Games asks a university class to do this - then they build each of the drawn bikes and attempt to ride them.
- lesss365 8y agoFunny, this is RISD's infamous application requirement.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y 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).
- Dylan16807 8y agoI'm curious about more numbers, too, but even if it's 1 vs. 7 I think it's worth noting.
- visarga 8y agoAll the while we're still looking down on GANs. AI has surpassed average human level in this domain.
- theshadowknows 8y agoSo what’s wrong with the bike?
- slesslytall 8y agoIt'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 8y agomissing a metal bar behind the chain
- C4stor 8y agoIf 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 8y agoThese 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 8y agoWhen 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.
- Kagerjay 8y agoreminds me of this meme that gets featured on reddit r/programmerhumor fairly often https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/5fyv4r/kirby_dev_team_attemps_to_draw_him_by_hand_xpost/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/5fyv4r/kir...