Nextiles is a company that develops fabric-based sensing materials that are sewn into cloth to help detect motion. With each Nextiles product, the user can receive real-time data on their performance.
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When working with Nextiles, we discovered that they wanted to redesign their app so that it further connects the product to the athlete. This app would allow users to interpret the data collected from each Nextiles product in an easy to read way for each athlete.

Project Type

Product Design

Timeframe

3 Weeks

Role

UX Designer

THE CHALLENGE

Create a native iOS app that supports the Nextiles’ physical product. The data that the sleeve can provide is endless, but we wanted to see how athletes can log and share data in order to track their improvement over time.

THE OUTCOME

Through our research, our team was able to understand the key biomechanical data that athletes look for when trying to enhance their performance, especially as it pertains to their throwing arm. We then created a user interface that is easily navigable, and seamlessly integrates into an athletes life.

THE IMPACT

Our client was able to expand the reach of their product further into the users lives. With the app, Nextiles can create further iterations for further products they create.

Nextile's New iOS App

Test Out The Prototype!

Project Goals

1.

Understand the specific metrics athletes monitor when they are working out

2.

Design intuitive and easy to understand graphs to display the datathe biometric sleeve calculates

3.

Create an onboarding flow that allows new users to easily connect their Nextiles product to their device

4.

Understand the current market Nextiles and what differentiates them from competitors

Target Audience

Finding our Space in the Market & 1st Iteration Users

Although there are various Nextiles products that athletes can use, it was important for our team to narrow down our target athlete in order to create a strong minimum viable product (MVP) that would be built upon in following versions. Discussing with our client their goals, we were able to narrow down the focus of our app to athletes that will be using the Nextiles arm brace.

Research Insights

Understanding the Features of the Nextiles Sleeve That Would Excel in the Market Space

Our team wanted to analyze potential competitors for Nextiles that had similar concepts., and we found that smart active ware was a growing market with fierce competition. We outlined every Nextiles feature, and compared it to similar features of their competitors. Through this process, we found there was a market space that Nextiles could excel in, and would give us more focus on our MVP. We identified the following two potential competitive spaces for Nextiles:

Visual Rendering of Motion

Tracking Stress Levels

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Research Insights

Understanding What These Athletes Need

Our team conducted user interviews with athletes, who were aiming to take their performance to the next level. Our conversations focused on understanding each athlete's everyday routine, and roadblocks that prevented them from reaching the next level.

Synthesizing Insights

Finding Pressure Points

Unfortunately due to privacy and time issues, we were unable to interview athletes who use the sleeve for their performance. Upon the next iteration, I believe this will be integral to upgrading the application. However, with the data collected from these interviews we were able to conclude these four specific insights:

Statistics Over Time

Athletes want to track their progress daily and be able to compare over time.

Warming Up

Athletes take warming up very seriously to prevent injury.

Multiple Coaches

Athletes usually train with multiple coaches and receive conflicting feedback

Metrics Monitored

Athletes monitor different metrics that are important to them

Persona

Giving our Athletes a Face

Before the team transitioned into our design process, we wanted to get a better understanding of what it’s like to be an athlete, so we created our persona Seth. Seth aligned our team on the common themes and key insights that emerged in our user interviews. Seth would serve as a compass for our team to ensure that we kept his needs at the forefront of our design process.

Meet Seth Sandlot . . .

Seth Sandlot

Pitcher for the Kane County Cougars

Seth is constantly trying to become a stronger pitcher, and is looking for a way to accurately measure his stats to find areas where he can improve. Alongside this, he worries that his intense practices will eventally lead to injury

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Journey Map

Another Practice Day for Seth

From this rough outline of his emotional journey, the very worst part of his day is immediately after practice, when he has to make sense of all the information given to him by his coaching staff and tries to figure out how in the world this information is going to help him became a better player.

OUR FOCUS

Athletes are constantly training and looking to improve their performance. They are frustrated with the lack of subjective information they receive from coaches, and want actionable ways to improve their performance.

Seth is looking to be recruited by a Major League Baseball team, and he’s afraid of re-injuring his arm. He feels stuck because he can’t figure out how to control his pitch and get it faster.

How might we provide athletes with the ability to track and compare previous data to help them improve their performance, share data with coaches and trainers, as well as a method of alerting them when they are at risk for injuries?

Designing Exploration

Taking a Look Back at Nextile's Previous Prototypes

Prior to designing, Nextiles showed us rough prototypes they had prepared before having our team onboard. These prototypes helped us understand how the physical product would connect to an app, and gave us an idea of the vision Nextiles had for their product. We were able to see data sets that were possible, and the way that the physical product could be used to represent data points to the user.

Old designs given to us from Nextiles

Connecting Our Research with Nextile's Rough Prototype

We found the initial UI from Nextiles to be unintuitive for users who are trying to take their skills to the next level. While there are data points that are available to the user, there is no way to interpret the data sets.

Brainstorming

Design Studio

Taking everything we learned from our research and honing down our focus, we invited our client to a design studio to brainstorm various ways to resolve this problem space.

Ideating

Mid Fidelity Prototyping

Our team went through many rounds of ideating, sketching and critiquing before collaborating on a final sketch of the main screens. Through these rounds of ideating, we collectively agreed on maintaining a couple of elements from the original prototype:

1. We wanted to present the data points through graphs with UI that presented more clear information to the user

2. Redesigning the START/STOP button on the main page in order to connect the product with the application

Core Features that Make Up the Nextiles iOS

Feature 1

Start a session with the sleeve on, and view the different biometrics measured

Athletes are looking for a way to see their progress, and receive statistics on their pitching. Referencing the data points we knew the sleeve could calculate, we began to pull important statistics for athletes from our conversations with them. We narrowed the statistics down to: the distance of the pitch, the angle of the pitching arm, and the acceleration of the arm as the pitch is being thrown. We organized it in an easy to navigate way that would allow pitchers to use the app as they have the sleeve on.

Feature 2

Check your stress levels on your tricep to see if you're at risk for injury

Through our conversations with athletes, we learned the importance of maintaining their health. With pitchers, there is excessive stress on their arm because of the constant pressure applied to it. When the stress levels reach certain levels, pitchers are at risk of injuring themselves, or risk long term damage. We successfully advised Nextiles to put this features as one of the highlights of the application. The visual representation of the sleeve on the app allows pitchers to easily overview the health of their arm with one glance.

Feature 3

Send a Summary of Your Session to Your coach

We found that athletes train with multiple coaches in order to reach their peak potential. It was important to add a feature that would allow athletes to quickly aggregate the information and send directly to their coach or coaches with ease.

FINAL CONCLUSIONS

WHAT WE LEARNED

Intuitive Graphs

Athletes felt there was a sense of trust in being able to see exact data points on their statistics. However, in many cases, athletes didn't have time or didn't want to spend the time understanding the data. A system would need to be built out to guide and assist each athlete to give them ways to interpret the data for each user.

Each Athlete Requires Different Statistics

We found common universal themes among various athletes like the need to prevent strain on the muscles and the importance of knowing when your body is prone to injury. However, when it comes to using the product to perfect their craft, we found that each athlete. We solved this problem by narrowing down the MVP to one specific sport. While it is a short term solution, when expanding there will need to be a method to customize each athlete's experience.

NEXTILES