The O&GO
The O&GO is the name of a phone cover designed by me and Joris Saaltink. We did this as our “Meesterproef”, which is a high school graduation project comparable to the “Profielwerkstuk” but takes up a minimum of 200 hours instead of 80. We reached out to the ANWB and they took on the role of “employer”.
Functionalities
With the help of the ANWB, we designed a phone cover that could also serve as a bicycle light. This was an elaborate project, and the final product was meant to serve a lot of different funtions, so I’ll summarize the most important functionalities, as well as the rationale behind them, in a list below.
- Bicycle light The O&GO has a lot of features but is first and foremost a bicycle light. We originally came to this idea when thinking of a way to address the problem of poor lighting on bicycles. The idea is that you can use the flashlight of your phone as a bicycle light.
- Action cam Since your phone will be mounted securely on your bicycle, it is possible to use the camera of your phone as a sort of action cam.
- Music / handsfree calling Many people listen to music whilst on their bicycle, and not including this possibility in the O&GO would discourage people from using our product.
- Navigation Since you have your phone mounted in your line of sight, it is very easy to check your route on your phone regularly.
- Weather Look at the weather forecast for your location and route. Is it going to rain?
- Monitoring The O&GO is not just for people who need to go from A to B. We also considered people who cycle as a sport when designing this product. They might be interested in monitoring things like their speed, distance, performance, etc. The O&GO is a perfect tool for this.
- Phone charging Although our tests proved otherwise, many people fear that using the flashlight on their phone will quickly drain the battery. We tried to include wireless charging functionality in the O&GO. Not all versions will have this however, since it drives up the costs significantly and isn’t very important to some people. There will be a solar powered and a cycling powered option.
Requirements
Naturally, a product such as this needs to adhere to serious requirements. Our report elaborately describes the process of forming- and finding methods to meet these requirements. We looked into different materials, use cases and user needs. All whilst trying to balance the costs. The most important requirements and their rationale are listed below:
- Waterproof It might rain when you’re cycling. And even though that’s annoying for you, it doesn’t have to be for your phone. The O&GO will protect it against rain.
- Universal Creating a unique O&GO for every mobile device is expensive and unnecessary. Our design neatly fits every device between width and height X. Even devices with different proportions. Since mobile devices differ greatly in size however, we’ve decided that there will be 3 versions of the O&GO available, to accommodate 3 different categories in size (S, M, L).
- Robust Not everybody is very skilled (or sober) when it comes to riding a bicycle. Especially with things like mountain biking, people might fall. Normally, this isn’t a large problem for your phone, but with the O&GO it will be mounted on your steering wheel and therefore in a danger zone. Therefore, we designed the O&GO to withstand as much impact as possible. We even designed for the O&GO to break before the phone would (Apple not confirmed).
- 90 degree rotatable The O&GO can be rotated 90 degrees to support both portrait and landscape mode on your phone. This is especially important when considering the phone as an action cam.
- Removable To prevent theft or vandalism, the O&GO can be removed easily from the steering wheel, leaving only the steadily secured base on the bicycle.
App & Website
The O&GO would come together with a free app and website. The website would serve as a portal for information. Here you could check which version of the O&GO would best suit your mobile device. Or you could customize your own O&GO. The app is meant to be used when cycling. We feared the O∧GO might encourage people to use their phone more whilst cycling, even though this is dangerous in traffic. The app would provide an interface for all the previously mentioned features of the O&GO, but it can also block calls for example (Comparable to those 'I'm in the car' apps).
Conclusion
This was a very fun project and we’ve each spend more than twice the required hours on it. I’m personally very proud on the results, especially considering the time it was made. If you wish to learn more about this project, download our report by clicking the button below.