Cycling Science and Systems Information Research
Cycling science explores the bicycle as both a mechanically elegant system and a dynamic platform for applied learning in systems information science. Its widespread familiarity and structural simplicity make it an ideal foundation for investigating how physical and digital systems interact. This interdisciplinary field spans engineering, data systems, cyber-physical integration, and human-centered computing.
While the bicycle may appear simple, its operation is governed by fundamental principles such as gear ratios, mechanical efficiency, and aerodynamic forces. Modern cycling technologies integrate advanced digital systems—including GPS-enabled computers, electronic gear shifting, and wireless sensors that monitor physiological and mechanical performance—creating a real-time data interface between human and machine.
For systems information science students, cycling offers a hands-on context for exploring Internet of Things (IoT) architectures, embedded systems, sensor networks, mobile computing, and digital infrastructure. It also supports research into human-machine interaction, smart mobility solutions, and the design of data-driven applications. Below are some example areas we are actively exploring through research initiatives.
Electronic Shifting and Mechanical Nostalgia
Shifts in media consumption and interface design permeate societal divides, including sport. In contemporary cycling, the digitalisation of drivetrain control—exemplified by electronic shifting systems such as Shimano Di2, SRAM AXS, and Campagnolo EPS—has replaced mechanical cables with software-mediated wireless protocols. These systems promise a friction-free user experience in which firmware substitutes for cables and data packets supplant tactile clicks. Yet the same digital networks that promote progress foster a resurgent nostalgia for mechanical drivetrains. This poster investigates how social-media platforms, magazines, podcasts, and YouTube channels narrate the transition from analogue to digital shifting as liberation and loss. Drawing on observation and rider testimony, it maps the discursive negotiations through which cyclists position themselves vis-à-vis innovation, authenticity, and identity. Advocates emphasise heightened precision, self-calibrating accuracy, minimalist cockpits, and seamless integration with head units and training applications. Critics counter with stories of depleted batteries, proprietary lock-in, and the erosion of a craft tradition in which riders tuned each gear by hand. Nostalgia, like aesthetic appeal, is thus performative as well as rhetorical. By situating electronic shifting within a broader ecology of digital media, the poster shows that technological adoption in sport is not a linear march toward progress, but a dialectical process in which convenience co-evolves with a longing for embodied skill and material simplicity.
Cycling Narratives for Embodied Health
Cycling is increasingly recognised as a pathway to health and mental wellbeing, yet empirical accounts grounded in lived experience, particularly in later life, remain limited. This poster presents a collaborative duo-autoethnographic study centred on the development of www.hakodatecycle.jp, a website to promote cycling information infrastructure in southern Hokkaido, Japan. The two author-researchers entered the project from contrasting physiological and biographical starting points. Their intersecting trajectories offer a reflexive lens on ageing, embodiment, and health promotion through sport.
The poster explores how their shared engagement with cycling, and with the co-creation of a digital community platform, has shaped their personal health narratives, supported mutual motivation, and fostered broader public engagement. It considers how cycling, as both a physical activity and a technologically mediated practice, enables dynamic reconfigurations of identity, capability, and connection in later life. The authors contend that the website itself functions as a “third space”, an evolving interface between personal health practice and public knowledge-sharing, supporting community wellness, age-inclusive participation, and conversations around active transport in the region. By highlighting the emotional, social, and technological dimensions of cycling across the ageing spectrum, the poster invites scholars, educators, and practitioners to reconceptualise cycling as an embodied and socially embedded form of health education and promotion across the lifespan.
Virtual Cycling Environments
From an systems information perspective, Zwift presents a rich environment for research into user behaviour, motivation, and performance. The platform incorporates game mechanics such as achievement badges, levels, in-game rewards, and social leaderboards to enhance user engagement and encourage consistent participation. These elements provide valuable data on how digital feedback, community interaction, and immersive design influence cycling habits and training outcomes. Zwift offers opportunities to study the intersection of technology, sport, and user experience—ranging from performance analytics to the psychological effects of virtual competition and collaboration.
Students in systems information science can use the Zwift platform as a dynamic environment for a wide range of research applications. With its rich integration of real-time data, user interaction, and gamified design, Zwift offers opportunities to study human-computer interaction, data analytics, behavioural motivation, and the effectiveness of AI-driven training systems. Research can also focus on areas such as social network analysis within virtual communities, the impact of gamification on user retention, and the design of adaptive feedback systems for personalized health interventions. The platform’s global scope and accessibility make it ideal for cross-cultural studies and longitudinal data collection.
Multimodality in Community Cycling Events
Framed within a society insidiously damaged by the novel coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdown restrictions, this article examines the drum and bass on the bike initiative of British DJ Dom Whiting. The initiative comprises of Dom riding a tricycle through various urban landscapes while broadcasting live to social media from on-board mixing decks. Since the first two solo rides in early 2021, thousands of individuals have accompanied him through twelve urban landscapes in addition to millions more participating across social media through views, comments, likes, and shares.
Situating YouTube uploads as text, and positioning Dom as a harmonic navigator of change and reformation in the urban space, the article draws from a social semiotic multimodal approach to communication and details the development of three multimodal gestalts indicative of post-pandemic society. Against a soundtrack of thunderous drum and bass music, the three emergent gestalts communicate post-pandemic utopianism through the reformation of the relationship between motor vehicle drivers and cyclists, the reformation of urban road space use, and the reformation of diversity in organized cycling events.
Technology Mediated Cycling Motivations
The number of interactive fitness technologies, applications and networks which have gamified and biomedicalized real-world activities such as cycling have increased significantly over recent years. Given the rising popularity of these Online Social Fitness Networks (OSFNs), it is important to understand their motivational affordances and the discursive communities of practice which they facilitate. Framing Strava as a case in point, this article adopts a content analysis approach to data drawn from 162 international cyclists on Strava to explore the motivational affordances and discursive practices dominant within the OSFN.
Strava’s design—especially its leaderboards, segment-based tracking, and social feedback mechanisms—actively shapes cyclists’ motivations by framing activity through data and comparative metrics. This encourages self-tracking, data-driven improvement, and social validation, while also fostering dependency on the platform’s real-time feedback. From a sports technology perspective, this signals that when designing fitness tech, developers need to balance motivational affordances with potential over-reliance. In other words, features that boost engagement (like segment KOMs and kudos) may inadvertently prioritize extrinsic motivation, prompting questions about long-term user engagement.
Metaphors of War in Cycling Commentary
The incorporation of metaphors into everyday language use has formed the basis of scholarly investigation and analysis for decades. Particular attention has been given to conceptual metaphors, which are seen as essential tools for individuals to interpret and process various ideas and experiences. Within the milieu of metaphorical speech, metaphors of war have frequently been applied across a range of domains including politics, business, and sport. Within the sporting context, the notion of ‘Sport is War’ has been discussed in relation to various football codes, boxing and tennis.
In this article, we examine the ‘Sport is War’ metaphor in relation to professional stage-race cycling, a sport known for its combative, tactical, and physically demanding nature. We focus on cycling commentary of the 2016 Tour De France – thus recalibrating the metaphor as ‘Cycling is War’. Our findings show that war metaphors are prevalent in cycling commentary, and are particularly useful in highlighting aspects of the sport inclusive of competition, strategy, power, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Through these categories, the ‘Cycling is War’ metaphor adds a deeper understanding of the technicalities of the sport as well as having the potential to elevate viewer engagement.