Leopard

🎯 Goal
  • Making a meaningful connection between sports science and HCI that has the power to change the way we live and experience Roundnet (Spikeball)
🚩 User Problems
  • Differences in players’ skill levels can lead to shorter rallies and less engagement
  • Leads to a less competitive and inclusive playing environment
  • Lets players feel demotivated
  • 10 weeks
  • Group project with 4 fellow students from the Master university course 'Sports Interaction Technology'
  • User Research
  • Ideating
  • Placing technology in The 21st Century SPORTS framework (paper by teacher - not published yet)
  • Design of Portfolio Page (Figma)
  • Documenting
Specification

The 10-week ‘Sports Interaction Technology’ course aimed to follow the Design Thinking cycle, which is heavily influenced by literature, and create a new and unique sports ITech concept.

Since four out of five group members were part of University of Twente's Roundnet (or widely also known as Spikeball) association Leap, our group decided to tackle this rather niche sport.

Here is a two minute video explaining the sport:

Empathise & Define

In the empathise and define phase, we wanted to understand the needs and wishes of our end user, as well as define which problem statement we want to tackle.

Empathise

To empathise with our end user (= roundnet players), we conducted ten interviews with members of the LEAP roundnet association. I set the guidelines up in Google Docs. They consisted of an introduction, demographic questions, roundnet specific key questions, a summary and a wrap-up.

Each of us interviewed one to four participants. Afterwards I analysed the findings by doing a thematic analysis. Two example pages of this analysis can be seen below.

The interviewees were aged 20-26 and mostly men from the Netherlands. Four rated themselves as advanced players, five as intermediate, and one as beginner/intermediate.

Some of the positive aspects of roundnet included:

  • Social and community aspect
  • Quick learning curve
  • Fitness is not a prerequisite

In contrast, negative aspects included:

  • Gets boring when serves end rallies quickly
  • Short rallies in general
  • Playing with different skill level players (skill differential)
  • Limited competition
  • Need of more people with the same level to train with
  • Specific exercises are difficult to learn (such as blocking or defense for low-skilled players)
  • Keeping track of scores

Based on these findings, we could identify three opportunities:

Define

It can be stated that short rallies are a general problem. Short rallies can happen due to differences in performance, but also in matches between top players, as the game usually ends directly after the serve due to the quality and strength of the serve.

Considering these factors and based on literature, an assumption is that introducing new rules to extend rally duration can enhance players’ skills without the need for extensive training.

Therefore, we concluded the following problem statement:

How could a new technology-based rule be introduced to extend the duration of rallies with dynamic changes in roundnet?

Ideate, Prototype & Test

To tackle our problem statement, we ideated with the Method 635, made a rapid low-fi prototype and tested it.

Ideate

We conducted the Method 635 in Miro and came up with 60 ideas in total.

Afterwards, the dot democracy strategy was applied to select an idea. The ideas with votes were grouped, and another round of voting with 3 votes followed.

Selected idea: Parts of the rim can light up and act as the only area where the ball is allowed to exit the net. This exit area can change dynamically based on the skill level of both teams. Alternatively, only the first ball as the serve could be directed differently to balance the initial attack.

Prototype

Since we wanted to test the different options of our idea and if it is feasible at all, one group member prepared one rim by wrapping reflective tape at one quarter.

The idea was then to let players of the Leap association play a game while one group member of ours will run into the game from now and then to give the net a spin so that the area is at a different place.

Test

Our idea of turning the net during the game was sub-optimal since it often took too long to rotate the net before a team would have to hit the ball in, and the person performing the rotations distracted everyone from the game.

Nevertheless, it significantly helped when the balancing was applied solely to the higher-skilled team. This rally was perceived as more fun by all players since it was easier for the less skilled people to defend. One of them even played for the first time and, as observed by experience players and trainers, moved more than what is typically the case for first-time players.

Hence, the idea showed promising results, and was developed further.

Taxonomy

The 21st Century SPORTS framework offers multiple branches that let us define and argue how the product should behave. In the following, we will address a few example branches that are also covered in the later presented portfolio page.

Leopard is for...

We address the net/court domain by tackling an encumebred, vis-a-vis and concurrent Spikeball play that offers intermediate players the option to enhance their engagement through longer rallies which also leads to better learning because of longer training sessions.

The skill domain is technical and tactical, while focusing on functional task complexity with negative, overt balancing, a closed function design and facilitative feedback.

Leopard...

Leopard acts conspective during the team competition play and gets used in-situ while the players are co-located to transform the exercise through rules that are required to follow. The facilitative, negative feedback gets provided after the movement through an audio-visual combination and single error responses. Leopard gets integrated within the session allowing for random/hybrid training plans.

Only through these requirements is it possible to control behaviour in such a way that offensively strong players have to regulate their play and defensively weak players get a greater chance.

Concept

For presenting the final concept, firstly the design and chosen logo get shown. Afterwards, the technology gets described and lastly the product video.

Brand Design

I am responsible for the brand design.

In order to find an overarching design for a coherent design language in our product concept, we brainstormed to find a name, I selected both a suitable font and colors, and designed a logo.

Our final name for the product is Leopard. Reasoning behind this is that the animal itself has opportunistic hunting behavior, great eyes for observing, and is found in all kinds of different habitats, showing its strength to survive in all conditions. These are all characteristics that fit very well with what we want to achieve with our technology, which is why we have named it as such.

The selected font needed to be modern and sporty. Therefore, the font Urbanist in the typefaces black italic for headlines and both extrabold italic and regular for copy text got selected.

The color scheme should also communicate a very vibrant, sporty and modern design. Hence, I decided to use the primary colors black and white to create heavy contrast. As secondary colors I used a saturated yellow, blue and red, especially to communicate visual feedback on the LEDs of the rim.

Logo

Finally, I created a logo for our brand. After sketching first drafts on paper, the final Leopard logo is a combination of a symbol and a wordmark built in Illustrator. While the wordmark is the name itself, the symbol is a representation of both the eye of a leopard and the net of the game with our camera in the middle, which will be described later on.

Technology

The Leopard unit consists of a fisheye-camera that utilizes computer vision combined with other sensors and actuators to provide the player with a plug-and-play system. One of the strong points of roundnet is its ease of set up, which was a key feature in the development of this design.

I was not part of developing the technology concept. Therefore, I will not go in detail here and only show the visuals summarising it:

The UML diagram shows the interaction flows:

Storyboards

To showcase two specific scenarios of Leopard, a group member designed two storyboards:

Video

To demonstrate Leopard's functionality, we created a product video. I sketched a rough storyboard after which we could film the neccesary footage. Afterwards, I created suitable animations in AfterEffects and cut the video in PremierePro.

To watch the video on YouTube, please click here:

Portfolio Page

Lastly, to present our concept in front of the class, we were supposed to create a portfolio page based on Kickstarter pages.

In the span of one day and on the basis of rough sketches, I managed to create a Figma page with the necessary components. It was also the first time I tested the responsive functionalities of Figma.

A sneak peak follows. Please click on the image to get to the Figma protoype.

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