Industrial Design · Graduation Project, Shanghai Dianji University · 2018–2019
A bicycle uses half a rider. The legs work; the arms hold on.
Most attempts to make a bicycle faster add a motor. POWERCYCLE adds the rider instead. The handlebars sit on a track along the frame and slide fore and aft; pulling them inward drives a secondary chain, and an internal spring returns them to position. The hands never leave the grips, so steering and upper-body balance are never surrendered — and when the rider does nothing, it behaves exactly like an ordinary bicycle.
It was my graduation project as an industrial designer: researched from patent databases and user surveys, specified against cycling ergonomics, modelled in Rhinoceros, iterated five times and built as a 1:10 3D print. It graduated with distinction and took First Prize at the National Golden Wheel Awards.
This is your engineering-literate project — the one that proves you can hold a mechanical idea, a body, and a form at the same time. It also opens a thread that runs through your whole portfolio: designing for a body that is already busy. Here it was a cyclist's hands; at Yordando it was a cook's. Say that out loud in the reflection and the portfolio stops looking like four unrelated projects.
I studied Industrial Design at SDJU for four years and I cycle daily, so when the graduation project came I chose the object I understood from the inside.
The bicycle is one of the most refined machines in existence, and that is exactly what makes it hard to design for: almost every obvious improvement has been tried. The active area of innovation is power assistance — and in China especially, that means motors and batteries.
That framing has a consequence worth noticing: an electrically assisted bicycle removes effort. But a large share of riders are not trying to remove effort. They are riding partly for the effort.
My role: everything — research, concept, mechanism, ergonomics, 3D modelling, iteration, model-making, naming and branding. It was a solo graduation project.
Tools: Rhinoceros (3D modelling), 3D printing (1:10 model), online survey tools, CNABS and SIPOABS patent databases.
Two independent lines, which is what made the direction defensible rather than personal.
I ran an online survey and a structured questionnaire on how people actually use bicycles.
I analysed the China National Patent Abstract Database (CNABS) and the World Patent Abstract Database (SIPOABS) for human–machine interaction technologies in power-assisted systems — looking at application volume, trends, principal applicants and technical categories.
The survey told me what riders want. The patent landscape told me what had already been attempted and where the space was still open. Very few undergraduate projects establish an opportunity that way, and it is the part of this project I would defend most confidently.
The direction that came out of it: dual-powered bicycle design based on physical balance — arms and legs together, with balance as the governing constraint rather than an afterthought.
How do you harvest power from a rider's arms without taking away the two things a bicycle cannot lose — steering control and upper-body balance?
After visiting bicycle shops around Shanghai and reviewing the global market online, I mapped existing bicycles on two axes — complex ↔ minimal and light ↔ heavy — and placed the target in the minimal-and-light quadrant, consistent with contemporary urban preferences. A mechanism that adds parts to a bicycle makes that decision harder, and therefore more important to fix early: the added system had to disappear into the frame rather than announce itself.
Each decision paired with its reasoning — show the artefact next to the argument.
Electric assistance removes effort; this adds capacity. It suits the riders my survey found — people riding for convenience and exercise — and it needs no battery, no charging and no regulatory category.
The handlebars travel fore and aft along a track on the frame; pulling them inward transmits power through an additional chain drive to generate extra momentum. The rowing action recruits the upper body in the one movement a cyclist's arms are already braced to perform.
This is the decision the entire concept rests on. Any arm-powered mechanism that requires releasing the bars costs the rider steering and balance at exactly the moment they are exerting force. By putting the power stroke into the grips, upper-body stability and control are preserved while the mechanism is in use.
The rider supplies the power stroke; the mechanism supplies the return. Without it the return stroke is dead effort and the action becomes tiring rather than rhythmic — the difference between a workout and a chore.
Disengaged, the handlebars behave exactly like those of a standard bicycle. The rider engages the sliding action when they want speed or an upper-body workout and ignores it otherwise. This is what makes it an ordinary bicycle with an extra capability rather than a special-purpose machine — and it removes the commitment barrier to buying one.
I measured my own bicycle for baseline dimensions and worked to established cycling fit parameters: handlebar drop of roughly 2.5–5 cm below saddle height, handlebar width of 53.3–70 cm, exposed seat post of 15–20 cm, with saddle height held constant across road and off-road configurations to protect pedalling efficiency. Handlebar width was the live trade-off — wide bars give leverage and low-speed stability, narrow bars give aerodynamics and agility — and since this mechanism pulls on the bars, leverage was no longer only a handling question.
The concept went through five generations before the final form.
The product: a minimal, lightweight urban bicycle with a secondary drive powered by the rider's arms. Handlebars slide on a frame track and drive an auxiliary chain; an internal spring handles the return; the system engages and disengages at will; the hands stay on the grips throughout.
Delivered as: a fully specified Rhinoceros model, five documented design generations, ergonomic specification, a 1:10 3D-printed presentation model, and a product identity — POWERCYCLE, with a logo whose left element reads simultaneously as a chain link and as a cyclist pulling a wheelie, and a smiling face set inside the O.
My contribution, stated plainly: I found an unoccupied space in a heavily patented field, and designed a mechanism that adds a second power source to a bicycle without asking the rider to give up control of it.
That a good design opportunity has to be found before it can be solved. The mechanism is the visible part, but the work that made it possible was the patent analysis — establishing that the space was genuinely open before spending four months in it.
This was the first time I designed for a body that was already occupied — a rider whose hands were committed to steering and whose attention was on the road. Every constraint came from that. Years later I designed a handheld device for cooks whose hands were full and whose attention was on a hot pan, and the underlying question turned out to be identical: how much can you ask of someone who has nothing left to give you? Industrial design taught me to answer that in millimetres and mechanisms. It is still the question I work on.
Reference blocks and production notes. Turn the appendix off before publishing.
A bicycle that adds the rider's arms as a second power source. Sliding handlebars on a frame-mounted track drive a secondary chain — without the hands ever leaving the grips. Graduation project, First Prize at the National Golden Wheel Awards.
A bicycle uses half a body. This one adds the other half — without giving up steering or balance.
Industrial Designer · 2018–2019 · Graduation project, Shanghai Dianji University (SDJU)
Survey and patent-landscape research · Concept development · Ergonomic specification · Mechanism design · Rhinoceros 3D modelling · Five design iterations · 1:10 3D-printed presentation model · Product naming and logo