The Velocafé aims to reimagine our interaction with the cycling cafe through a consistent design approach. Across computational visuals and designed ephemera, the velocafé (read: cycling café) becomes part of the visual language associated with communal coffee and cake. Inspired by the winged wheel symbol of the Cycling Touring Club the velocafé ‘clock’ uses mechanical sound and proximity detection to visually display the sense of community and belonging that is felt when visiting a cycling café. Through an array of lights that only trigger when there are sounds and people around, it shows through a modern visual language that there are cyclists in the café. Like a Michelin star for cycling cafes the velocafé ‘clock’ denotes a good cycling café, not simply through arbitrary testing, but through live data that is being collected within the café and displayed to “tempt the [passing] rider to early tea”.
In order to locate the compute elements I created a clock-like enclosure, using laser-cutting to create a diffused layer with elements of the Winged Wheel symbol engraved.
To house the Arduino devices and their wires I put together a box to house them, with a door on the exterior which positioned the sound and ultrasonic sensors. It was important to position these in the correct location in order to collect the sound and proximity data, I placed the sound sensor close to head height, and the ultrasonic sensor lower to reflect off the body of a passing person.
