NIKE DIGITAL SPORT
Nike+ Kinect Training
The world's best personal trainer, in your home.
Harness the unreleased Kinect to bring innovation and inspiration to Athletes in their own home.
THE BRIEF
"Democratise Nike's expert athletic trainers, bringing their
unparalleled knowledge and motivational tone into the home."
I was part of the team who helped little known company PrimeSense make some game demos to sell in their 3D camera sensor to Microsoft. The demos worked and the Kinect camera was born.

As one of less than 500 people world-wide who had worked directly on the technology, I was contracted by AKQA to run the game design and UX track for this experimental journey into the unknown.
What I did
It all starts at your point of contact with the ground. You alternate flexible with stable: flexible ankles, stable knees and so on, up the body."
Grey Cook, Creator of Functional Movement Systems
This project was part creation of an Expert System and part education about the power of AI to do the heavy lifting for you.

I lead a UX team of up to five mixed-level practitioners to create the screens, displays and workflows for the Xbox trainer and mobile companion app.

We also had to prototype a completely novel interface for a system that wasn't yet available. My 5 years' of camera gaming came in useful. I worked closely with an ex-Samsung Labs UXer to build Wizard of Oz style prototypes, where we puppeted a TV display to mimic the interface reacting to user's inputs to learn what worked quickly with no code needed.
My Many (many) Tracks of Work
High Level Game Design
Designing the flow of the 4 week workout programme, the individual sessions and the second-to-second gameplay.
Novel Interaction Design
Created the novel interface and gained 7 patents for those innovations.
Behaviour Shaping
Imagined how to stitch the cadence of the workouts into people's lives, by asking them to commit to named workout days and by ending every session with an appointment to return.
Technical Breakdown
Mapping virtual bones to real movements, tracking to realistic animation and the larger dev tasks meant we could help Nike understand the scope of the 28 month project.
Expert System Mapping
I interviewed expert trainers to capture their analytical process and encoded it into a ruleset to produce outstanding personalised training.
UX and Wireframing
Every screen, menu and interaction, meticulously laid out with all the edge-cases detailed.
Stakeholder Collaboration
Making sure that the Nike Brand was carried through into the product, but that it worked for Microsoft, AKQA and the two game studios building the product.
Cross-Platform integration
Imagined how the training programme could come with you on the companion app.
Work Product
Things I made to help the others do their work, and to prove that our approach was sound.
Game Flow
The Kinect menu systems had to link together in a logical way to make all the user's tasks simple to perform and easy to find. I mapped them out and tested the flows with my team of UXers.
Creating a Fitness Session
The cadence of an individual session was shaped by the expert trainers and our own experience training with them. We made sure that the flow moved through physical space in the virtual gym, as well as through different exercises.
Animation, VO and SFX
Detailed the physical mo-cap work, VO and supporting SFX needed for the trainers at each moment of the experience.
Trainer Behaviour
How the trainer AI alters the programme based on the user's attendance and performance was a blend of expert physiological knowledge and behaviour shaping.
Planning and Testing workouts
Led by the Nike Trainers,
Button States
Unlock on the web or an app, we developed a system that needed some unique states and they were detailed for the team so we could create the right assets.
Reception
Cannes Lions - Gold - User Experience
Cannes Lions - Silver - Digital Platforms
Creative Review - Best in Book - Digital (Single)
BAFTA - Nominee - Sports & Fitness
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All work