Where the Quality in Intentional Quality comes to life
​
The Canadian Olympic Luge team came to us to develop new force handles, much like they saw amongst other national luge teams.
​
We started with our Intentional Quality approach, where quality means design management that ensures we are solving the RIGHT problem, as opposed to wasting time and money to deliver a well-designed WRONG solution. Therefore for Luge Canada that started with an ask to visit the track, talk to athletes AND coaches in order to capture the right KPI's to measure.
What We Learned
While data from the force handles was being collected, that data was sent off-site for data processing and the analysis took several days to return to the coach and athlete.
The Light-Bulb Moment
This lag in data processing time, made it difficult for coaches and athletes to recall specific runs and therefore give the best direction on how to improve performance going forward. Therefore, because of our approach, the key challenge was identified - reducing the time lag between data collection, data analysis and coaching intervention during training to improve athlete performance. We needed to find a way to get instantaneous measurements with data processing and analysis integrated into a system that coaches could provide REAL-TIME feedback to the athletes.
Problem Solved
We developed a novel system connecting the starting gate sensors over WIFI to an iPad app which integrated data collection and processing with video capture of the athlete, in real-time. Coaches appreciated the media-rich interface to help explain desired interventions. Athletes liked being able to review video and data with fresh muscle memory.
