A LOOK INSIDE NIKE'S SPORT RESEARCH LAB (3)

When you work that far in advance, what is it like to see the final product?

What really motivates us is when we see our products being used on the field of play, whether its at a pinnacle event like the Olympics or the World Cup, or just seeing someone out on a run. We obsess the details. We stare at their feet,nike free and if they are in a motion-controlled shoe and it looks like they are pronating too much, we worry about those things. If we go to a soccer game and an athlete slips, we obsess over that and we come in the next morning and everybody’s asking each other “Hey, did you see that person slipping? ” We start to question why did that happen, what are we doing wrong, and how do we make it better.

So it’s not all about the data?

We collect a lot of data, an unbelievable amount of data. But by itself, data is useless until you turn it into knowledge. And the knowledge that we gain from each project and each athlete helps us better understand the product at hand. The long-term benefit of having a sport research lab like ours since 1980 nike air max 90 is a wealth of information to build on.

How do you convert data into actual product features?

We can look at data from athletes about how they perform, how they move and how they fatigue; and we can look at data from product as it relates to fit, flexibility, traction and cushioning. However, the interaction between athletes and products is complex, and requires a lot of data to solve. Take motion capture for example. We put markers on athletes and we collect 200 frames per second and higher — so for one second, there is a minimum of 200 frames of information. And each one of those has three-dimensional coordinates from the nike air max 1 athlete’s movements. Over the coarse of one particular study, we have, say, 10 subjects come in with two different shoes, or two different actions (running, jumping), and we end up with millions of data points that we need to capture and analyze. Then we take that information and drive product.