How can augmented human technology contribute to the way we ski in 2025?

How can augmented human technology contribute to the way we ski in 2025?

Esser, Jimmy (TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering)

Jansen, Arjen (mentor)
Pavlic, Viki (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Strategic Product Design

2018-08-29

The title of the thesis already give a way the challenge. How can augmented human technology contribute to the way we ski in 2025? To find an answer on this question a possible view on the future of skiing and superhuman is created. This future vision is used to come up with a game design for a revolving ski slope.

In the first part of the thesis a better understanding of the terms skiing and superhuman sports is created. Skiing is described as the action of travelling over snow on skis. To narrow the project there is chosen to go for alpine skiing. Because of the extended equipment of a skier there are many physical locations were superhuman technologies can be placed. Alpine skiing can be practiced on snow in the mountains, indoor skiing on artificial snow, skiing on artificial grass and skiing on a revolving slope with artificial grass. The last part about skiing shows that most used technologies are applications for a smartphone and action cameras. Wearables, virtual reality and augmented reality are also product available but they are not commonly used. Based on van Zon (2017) superhuman sports can be described as “Activities that rely on technology for human augmentation, involve physical fitness and skills and are played for fun, competition and/or health reasons.” The first part ended up with questions for further research.

The second phase gave answer to the research questions how the future of skiing and superhuman technologies might look like. Qualitative research resulted in five main topics on the change of skiing. There is decided to go on with playful moving and unexpectedness. Beside that there is found that a revolving ski slope could be a good location to augment skiing. From research on superhuman technologies it came forward that augmented reality, motion capture and haptics are the most promising ones to augment skiing. These findings were processed in a design brief.

The design brief is the introduction to the design phase. Via elaboration on existing products, individual brainstorms, a creative session and an iteration session three concepts were generated. A short user test and the framework ensured that there could be chosen for one of these concepts. This final concept is called Hit Me!. Hit me! is a one versus one ski game. It is a combination of hardware and software that is purchased as an add-on to the existing revolving
Slopes. It provides unexpected digital objects that need to be hit. When the object is hit a new object will pop up somewhere else on the slope. The unexpectedness of this game will make you a more complete skier. Beside that the game creates interaction that there normally is not between skiers. This ensures it brings an extra fun factor to skiing on a revolving slope. A user test on a revolving slope showed that. All participants can see the added value of technology on a revolving slope. Everyone was very enthusiastic about the competitive and interactive aspect of the game. It makes the game attractive to play.

In the last part a business case proposal is used to prove the concept has added value for the buyer. The buyer is the owner of a revolving ski slope, always ski schools. Hit Me! can lead to a double turnover during summer months. Therefor it need to be marketed as fun group activity.

Superhuman sports
Skiing
Augmented Reality
Revolving Slope

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:c61710a7-7951-41a6-9082-8a533e0131b4

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

© 2018 Jimmy Esser