I decided to start recording my progress with the project online... Frankly, I should have been doing this all along.
So, essentially, for those who don't know, I'm in 3rd (final) year Industrial Design. During this year, each student is assigned a major project to be worked on throughout the two final semesters. This year, the teachers decided to go whack on us and gave us some pretty daunting projects.
Mine was to redesign an gondola lift system for mass transportation across the rivers surrounding our insular city of Montreal. The system should be adaptable to transportation within the city as well, and must accommodate for two bicycles and one wheelchair.
More on gondola lifts here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondola_lift
My work right now is to figure out a system to secure a bike outside of the cabin with minimal intervention from the user. Putting the bike in is fairly straightforward; the problem lies in how the user takes the bike out, and how the system must reset itself to accept another bike without extra work from the user.
Ah, the wonders of industrial design. The more I look at a product, the more problems I find.