Co-creating solutions with our customer's customer
How do we design our SDK to surface the capabilities that our customers can use to solve the needs of their customers. The answer is rooted in the discipline of design thinking, and in particular, the practice of “Customer Ethnography” by designers in the role of anthropologists.
Broadly, anthropology is the study of humans, including human behavior. Specifically, the practice of ethnography is one of “participant-observer”. Practically it means that before design a digital product for a specific group of users, to spend time amongst those users, silently observing their behavior, their interactions, the needs they’re trying to address and the goals they’re trying to solve. Hiding in plain sight are workarounds, inventions and kernels of innovation that might just become the spark for a better solution.
“I remember the first time I visited Marin Rowing Association, in California, for a photoshoot for the ASENSEI website. There was an elaborate setup of one of the concept 2 rowing machines has been jury rigged to have a sweep oar. It had a super old TV in front of it, and I noticed sharpie pen on the TV screen with a series of lines … the lines represented the lean back at the finish, guides for the head to ensure good posture through the stroke, and a line to indicate where to stop the stroke at the catch.
To the side of the erg, a hole had been cut into a plywood wall, and an old VHS video camera was pointing side on. The coach could draw some guides on the TV screen, the athlete could focus forward while rowing, and get a feedback loop to ingrain good movement pattern.
Having just spent several years at Adobe and Microsoft with largely the same team of designers at both, the ethnography skills I’d picked up to see the innovations hiding in plain sight, helped me understand only a few months into starting the company in 2014, that ASENSEI could solve and scale an athlete/coach interaction in a delightful way.
Steven Webster, CEO, ASENSEI”
ASENSEI LAB - PORTLAND (USA) AND GLASGOW (SCOTLAND)
Join the ASENSEI team, and you’ll have the opportunity to spend time not just with our customers, but with our customers. Whether it’s on the gym floor, in a performance facility, on a running track, a baseball field or a boat house, you’ll be encouraged to observe athletes in their natural habitat, looking for the frictions and pain points, or the innovations and accomodations that they make to get better, and thinking about whether there’s an opportunity for movement recognition and coaching intelligence to solve and scale in a more delightful manner.
The ASENSEI LAB in Portland, Oregon is housed inside a 6500 square foot space, Living Lab PDX, that can best be described as a cross between an IDEO and Apple inspired design-thinking studio, an Microsoft and Dolby inspired technology incubator, and a state of the art fitness facility, equipped with the latest tools from CrossFit and boutique gyms. The Living Lab boasts over 250 local members, the perfect community of users to co-create and test new Connected Health and Fitness concepts with, powered by ASENSEI.
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ASENSEI LAB is a partnership between ASENSEI and COMN.
DELIVERING SOLUTIONS FOR CONNECTED ROWING AT QUEENWOOD SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
When ASENSEI movement programmer Daragh McCarthy decided to travel, so that he could live/work from Australia chasing the perfect wave, he reached out to his old boss Alfie Young, Rowing Director of Queenwood School for Girls. The school regularly produces athletes for Ivy League universities and national team representation. Recently, they had a full crew in Italy training for the Junior World Championships.
Daragh previously coached both adult and youth-level rowing teams at Coláiste Iognaid Rowing Club & Tribesmen Rowing Club in Galway, Ireland and Queenwood School for Girls in Sydney, Australia. He has guided teams to wins at the Irish School Nationals and Australian State Championships, while also contributing to the training of the ‘Tribes’ for the World Rowing Masters Regatta.
So when Daragh landed in Sydney, he decided to split his work time between his home office and Queenwood School for Girls, who share facilities with Mosman Rowing, a prestigious Australian club responsible for Olympic Coaches and Athletes alike.
By working at Queenwood, Daragh has access to the equipment he needs to train ASENSEI in the correct rowing stroke and common movement faults. But as importantly, he has access to coaches and athletes, who can test the solutions he is developing, providing valuable feedback and ideas for how they would wish to use solutions powered by ASENSEI.
Design thinking is in our DNA, bringing the voice of the athlete and the voice of the coach - our customer’s customer - into our product roadmap, capabilities and testing.
This article first appeared in Issue 8 of ASENSEI INSIDE. Subscribe here.