What are your ideas about promoting a new product?

Have you had problems unicycling? (Product design ideas...)?

• I've currently just begun taking Product Design at college and have a question relating to unicycles and/or product design. I've also took up unicycling a few months back and I am fairly good at it now and would say I have a certain passion for unicycling. I want to ask if any unicyclists here, or anyone else that might know of any, have experienced any problems with unicycles themselves? Anything at all? Or know of anything that could be improved or designed as an accessory to enhance the unicycling experience. I'm open to any and all ideas that people might have as I need an idea for a project. If you can't think of anything, any other ideas about any products that could be improved that you have would be a great help. Thanks! Alex. EDIT: Also any ideas relating to other circus items/accessories would be appropriate here and I would be grateful.

• Answer:

  The two things in mountain unicycling at the moment are geared unicycles and disc brakes. The KH Schlumpf two speed hub geared unicycle is available and there has been work to develop three speed unicycles. For brakes, the nimbus oregon has a disc brake and there is a bolt-on disc brake system from mountainuni. Some issues I see with these two developments that could be improved on are as follows: The KH hub changes gear by a button on the end of the axle you have to click with your heel. This is hard to do reliably. A remote gear shift solution meaning you can have a button on the saddle handle would be great. Im thinking a radio controlled solenoid to push the button since you can't use wires/cables. The nimbus disc brake requires a new hub and new frame with mounts. The mountainuni system requires special cranks which have the spider to bolt the disc on. It would be nice to have a disc that fits over the ISIS splines between normal cranks and the frame, where a spacer normally sits on ISIS cranksets. That way you could retrofit any unicycle with a disc provided you could also develop a clamp on bracket for the frame to hold the caliper also.