Smithsonian.com

Trek Lime Bike, winner of the People's Design Award. Courtesy of Trek Bicycle Corporation.

Every year, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum asks the public, what constitutes good design? This October, a couple hundred products were nominated and thousands of votes were cast in the fourth annual People’s Design Award contest—and the winner was (drum roll, please)…the Trek Lime bicycle.

Marketed for the 65 percent of Americans who do not own or ride a bike, the sleek, three-speed automatic shift Lime with push-back brakes is the perfect urban commuting bike. Flip up the saddle, and it has a handy-dandy storage compartment for a wallet and keys.

Its designer, Hans Eckholm of Waterloo, Wisconsin-based Trek Bicycles, accepted the award at the National Design Awards gala on October 22 in New York City. I suspect it was a proud moment for Eckholm, whose sister wrote on the contest’s comment board, “He has been engineering bikes since he was little. He would take bikes apart, put them back together and customize them to his liking!…He is our rock star and I hope this design wins!”

It has been a big couple years for bikes at the Cooper-Hewitt. In 2008, the museum partnered with New York’s Department of Transportation on the CityRacks competition to design a new sidewalk bicycle rack.