Co-Creation Part 2: Versatile Bike Lights

Co-Creation Series:

1. Welcome to Lumos Co-Creation Series
2. Part 2: Versatile Bike Lights
3. Part 3: Design
4. Part 4: An Effortless User Experience
5. Part 5: Accessorising Firefly
   

Thank you to everyone for your feedback. There were some really great ideas in there, some of which we hadn’t considered too seriously, but because you’ve mentioned it, we’re now thinking about it a lot more. Stay tuned as we’ll be incorporating as much of the feedback as possible within these updates.

I’ll try to address a few comments in this post, and at the same time give you all an update on where we’re at regarding the design of the bike lights.

One thing that was abundantly clear from the feedback is that there are a lot of good ideas and they’re all pulling in different directions. We’re no strangers to intense feedback from our customers as we know you can be very passionate about the things we build, which we love, by the way.

I believe it is our job to deliver what you (reasonably) ask, but that also means making the hard choices on what to deliver on and what to push to a potential future product. We know full-well that trying to cram on features without strong use-cases is asking for trouble and makes for a very unfocused, often-times unreliable product.

At the same time though, we don’t want to disappoint, so we try our very best to make things happen.

With that, let’s talk about the word for this update:

Since this is our first bike light product, we didn’t want to focus on just a front light, or a rear light, but wanted to ensure that whatever we make could be used for both. Of course, there are a few limitations here, but first and foremost, we wanted the lights to be super versatile so that we can get them out into our customers’ hands and on your rides and get as much feedback from you as possible before deciding on the next lights.

You heard that right, these won’t be a one-off product, but an introduction to a new line of products from us. We’ll get to that in the future, but for now, the most versatile bike lights!

We actually started off with calling these lights “Minis” as the idea was that they would be small enough to mount just about anywhere, hence the versatility. Thinking about where we’d expect you to mount the lights, we came up with the following…

That’s a lot of versatility. We decided to tackle this problem by chipping away at the large rock to eventually narrow down on a few mounting solutions as making a new mount for each possible location is neither smart, nor environmentally conscious.

Those mounting solutions are:

• a handlebar/seatpost mount
• handlebar end mounts
• a helmet/armband mount
• a dedicated turn signal mount

Let us know if you feel we’ve overlooked an important mounting solution that absolutely needs to be in the launch lineup.

Fun fact: We actually also explored mounting to apparel, like t-shirts and jackets, but that solution ended up pulling us in a direction that was counter to the key features we wanted for these lights (ie longer battery life, brighter LEDS, etc)

Whilst this prototype is pretty sexy and if we were Apple, we’d congratulate ourselves on the thinness of the design at the expense of other important features, this is not what we think is practical for the majority of you, so this direction is currently on hold for a bit. That said, do let us know what your interest levels are here, as it may affect how we prioritize the next lights.

There’s also been feedback regarding being able to use the lights in specific ways, such as white for the front, red for the rears and yellows for the side. To address that feedback, each light will come equipped with at least all 3 of those colors to allow them to be used as fronts, rears, sides and turn signals.

We’ve played around with the idea of RGB LEDs and for our fans of the Matrix helmet, imagine a much larger version played out with a light being a single pixel in a full array. Now, this is us dreaming big, and as a tech demo, I would absolutely love to be able to pull it off, but it again loses focus on what we’re trying to build here. Again, that doesn’t mean the idea is off the table, so do send us feedback on this idea and if it’s generating enough excitement, I would have a pretty strong case to put forward the development of an RGB version of this light.

There was some more feedback that wasn’t quite bike light related, but I think makes sense to address in this update.

We couldn’t include front turn signals in Ultra as we were really trying to hit an aggressive price-point but still push for a high quality end product. We attempted to add front turn signals in the development stage, but the front light was just too small of an area for turn signals to be easily distinguishable, so we unfortunately had to drop it.

However, with the bike lights, it’s definitely possible to use them as front turn signals for your Ultra helmet. It’s not an ideal solution as you’ll need to purchase the extra lights, but the upside is that they’re way more noticeable and the lights can also double up as front lights if you wish to use them as such.

Finally, we intend for these bike lights to sync up with every Lumos helmet, so even if you’re an owner of our original Kickstart helmet from way back, get excited as these will work with your setup!

I’m being forced to keep to a 1000 word limit, which I’ve just hit, so I will be wrapping it up here. We have set up a quick survey to ask a few burning questions and get your inputs so do feel free to fill that in and register your votes. If surveys are not your style, but you still want to tell us something, then fire away in the comments and I’ll try to get to them in the next one!

 Until then, ride safe!

Lumos Firefly is live on Kickstarter now! Enjoy up to 35% off with our Early Bird discount before the campaign ends.