To not become good, but great at hurdles, young talents feel pressure to do everything possible to succeed. Daily practices and drills become routine. The families hire personal coaches to work with their young athletes. As their passion grows, hurdlers need more and more effective personal training tools. How/what kind of personal training can help them to unlock their potential?
Research
To get to know existing personal training experience, I conducted the interview with young hurdlers who are in medium experience levels (2~3 years.) The questions mostly related to their experience of hurdle practice. Based on the interview and researched data, I could identify their need and pain points.
Current Hurdle Self-Training Tools
Problem
It is hard to spot and fix common mistakes the hurdlers making during the hurdle self-practices.
When hurdlers don’t have track practice, they cannot get accurate feedback as coaches cannot always be there and watch their jumps. It is hard to know if they have good form or not without somebody watching. Moreover, it is hard to install hurdles at home. There is a lack of space for them to practice it whenever they want to.
Ideation
Even it is said to be portable, it is still limited by the space. Athletes do best when they are in a familiar setting.
01 Portable Mat
02 Portable Hurdle
03 Smart Track
Solution: Intelligent Coach
The solution I chose to make was the 120 m smart track accompanied by an app. During hurdling, the runners will get instant feedback on their jumps. If they jump too high, the floor part between two hurdles will show white LED lights. Through the app, hurdlers can book the lane and see all gathered data during their practices.
- tRACK overall
- Track Detail
- App
How does it work?
01
Book the Lane
Save your time by booking a lane earlier
02
Check Your Booking
Check the location and time of your booking
03
Go to Your Booked Lane on Time
By using NFC chips, the lane automatically recognizes you. To start the hurdle practice, you need to step on the blinking start button.
04
Practice Hurdle
05
Check Data
Learn about yourself by checking your data
Challenge I Overcame
The final product above is v2. In v1, I used the red light to give feedback. However, it was wrong because it's hard to see in the sunlight. In addition, the map was missing. Because of this, it confused users about where to go at a scheduled time. It was simply not usable based on what my potential users told me. Even though v1 was a finished product, I decided to redo it completely.
