The Strava App for Google Glass demonstrates that the brand want to enrich the competitive sport experience and are willing to embrace new technology. However their presence in this area is fairly limited at this stage.
There is competition from emerging products such as this one called RaceYourself where you can compete in a variety of activities against yourself or "ghost" competitors.
The new concept proposed below is an advancement on existing augmented reality apps and involves displaying fitness activities onto the physical environment. The proposal is appropriate for the future Strava in 2025 when the need to reestablish social communities is heightened in overpopulated urban environments. The aim is to revert back to real world social interaction using sport and fitness rather than the virtual competition that is popular on many platforms today.
The system could either provide users with pre-made activities, or a selection of tools to create a challenge themselves. The latter would essentially use crowdsourced material to enrich the experience. Below are some examples of how the system could work.
Having developed the basic premise of the concept the next task was to create a tangible product that embodies the idea.
The product could be a handheld device that projects the challenges onto the environment?
The product could be fixed or stationary? This will mean that the user can interact with the environment and projected challenge more freely, however it will allow less freedom to where users can participate in an activity.
The device could be wearable? This would mostly constrain it to augmenting the challenges rather than projection as it would constantly move with the person. It would also be in direct competition with many other products in this sector.
3D projection was chosen as the medium to create the virtual challenges, not only to differentiate from other competitors but to allow users a greater connection to the real world when playing rather than immersed in the virtual experience augmentation offers. To be effective the projection needs to be delivered from a height therefore the best realisation is a flying device allowing freedom in where it can project. The sketch iteration above shows the various methods to acheive this.
Quick foam models were used to gain quick inspiration for further form exploration as well as to gauge sizing and ease of manufacture.
The possibility of using jet engines to propel the product was ruled out at this stage. For sustained stationary flight this method would be very high on fuel costs.
The use of air propulsion seemed the best method for the flight of the product at this stage. It is far more effective to suck in the surrounding air and blow it out to propel the device upwards, as well as using rotor blades for manoeuvring.
This is the chosen design direction: A hovering device that projects active challenges onto real world environments. Below outlines the product proposal, how it works and how it integrates into the Strava system.
As well as providing access to fun ways of keeping fit, the product also encourages increased social interaction and a restoration of real life competition rather than virtual.
The final stage in the process was to set some parameters and model the product in 3D. This model was entirely hand made from ureal, glued and spray painted.
