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Design research for innovations in sport

The project of designing an innovative respiratory simulator “New Breath” for Sport Technology became a real success. SmirnovDesign specialists spent only eight months on the whole project – from product to molds designing and production.

The story of designing this product is quite interesting. The claient obtained patentmore than six years ago, but contacting many different organizations didn’t help realizing the idea into an intuitive and technically perfect product. Only after addressing the group of companies SmirnovDesign and SmirnovTechnology the unique simulator got second wind.

By the moment of addressing our designers there existed two variants of the product and thus the work on the product design started from thorough examination of the existing samples. A number of defects that had to be eliminated were discovered. For example on the first sample the working angle of the device could not be changed, so it could be used only when swimming on the stomach. Besides, the device was literally assembled by hand using any material available and thus was not suitable for mass production. The drawbacks of the second sample varied also from device’s unsuitability for mass production to the complexity of the heavy construction (the product was made on a war factory) and impossibility of using the device in action.

The client’s demands were complex and rather stringent: it was necessary to design two variants of the device – for underwater and land sport, to minimize investment into molding and to do this in the shortest amount of time possible.

The actual work on the project was preceded by a stage of design research, including marketing statistics analysis, observation of the market in this particular segment of similar sports and medicine products made of silicone and plastic, as well as immersing in real situation of using the product. Approaching this project as designing optimal customer experience, SmirnovDesign conducted several iterative tests to prove the design is what potential user expects.

The next step was to examine different products to choose the materials. Besides, main trends in sports industry as well as professional sportsman’s product experience were analyzed. Today this so-called “zero” phase during which the basis for design strategy is laid is becoming more and more important in the process of design. Qualitative and quantitative research made by designers before starting the actual work on the project, processing and synthesizing product concept basing on the acquired data has long drawn attention of developers in the West. This stage of new product development process is called design research.

The acquired information along with the results of the existing construction variants as well as of client’s requirements analysis were structured in the form of main construction requirements:
1. minimal weight – 50 g (for optimal use in action, for example while running);
2. minimal length of protrusion (to facilitate holding);
3. minimal number of parts (to minimize investment into molding);
4. parts unification for underwater and land variants of product (to minimize investment into molding).

That was followed by a stage of developing ergonomics and parts unification for the two variants of product – underwater and land ones – designers started to work on possible product exterior and the variants of its decoration.

One of the interesting parts of the project was creating a prototype with a technique very rare in Russia that helps create soft prototypes. Afterwards the prototype was tested by SmirnovDesign and Sport Technology specialists under real sport conditions.

During the technical stage of the project the product colour was chosen and by the means of SmirnovTechnology company molds for manufacture were made as well as a sample batch of both product variants. The samples were then successfully tested by professional sportsmen that mentioned intuitive use, safe fastening and product’s modern appearance matching world sport industry standards.

The product designed by SmirnovDesign allowed Sport Technology to enter the market with a device different not only by innovative solutions in the area of sport technologies, but also by a thorough product design, considerably widening product’s possibilities. The simulator “New Wind” appeared in several articles both in printed media (Expert, October 2006), and the Internet.

Client: Sport Technology(Russia)

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