Kid’s Mode

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Gauge Mode

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Character Mode

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Lap Monitor

A marshall monitors the laps to identify missed and duplicate laps. The interface is designed to bring potential issues to the attention of the marshall. This allows one marshall to effectively monitor an entire pool of athletes. This is an advanced user screen with visual noise such as repetitive labels and units ommitted.

Bike Sensor

A custom low cost bike sensor was designed using simple electronic parts. These sensors provide the equivalent data as commercial sensors at 30 times the cost. The design progressed through a series of prototypes starting on a breadboard and progressing to soldered circuits on protoboards. A printed circuitboard design is also available but has not yet been printed for live use. The sensors feed into a collection network designed to scale to hundreds of sensors (more than enough for a mass training events).

Lap Counter

The lap counter compliments the swim training software by semi-automating swim events. The lap counter provides a simple and relable device for tracking swimmer laps and race finishes. A smartphone app for use as the lap counting device is also under design. Use of an app versus a dedicated device has interesting usability concerns, each with benefits and drawbacks. Depending on marketing and target markets, either option (or both) provide viable solutions. Exploring both an application-based design and a physical device design to solve a user need has been an interesting design activity.

Presentation

A presentation for youth introduces the science behind electronic sensors and mechanics of F.R.E.D. as well as microprocessing and software for controlling these electronics. Participants are engaged in a few interactive and hands-on activities through the talk to facilitate the learning and keep the content exciting.

Design

A visualization of the skid drive system, compass, proximity, and diagnositic readouts are wirelessly transmitted to a display for better understanding. Participants can view F.R.E.D.'s status in realtime and ‘see’ what data F.R.E.D. is using to make choices.

Electronics

Using sonar, pulsed electro magnetic motors, and a triple-axis magnetometer give F.R.E.D. the mechanics to move, avoid obstacles, and know which direction it is facing. These sensors and actuators are controlled using the Arduino microprocessor platform programmed with a variant of C++.

The original Tornado Triathlon site had a huge number of usability issues. The site had a confusing navigation model that displayed paged content below the fold making page changes appear as if nothing happened.

The site was impossible to use on mobile or touch devices. The style clearly dated itself and the abundance of text was better suited for a small novel.

The new Tornado Triathlon site is a response site that works equally well on mobile devices and desktop. The majority of content is refined into a single page with a natural progression of information exploration identified by data analysis and observation.

Styles have been updated to include richer media content that lends itself to the branding image of the club.

The original Sports Science site made it difficult to understand what the product being offered was. It also suffered significant style issues which made the site inaccessible to many. A clean view of the value of the business was needed along with compelling content that differentiated Sheryl from her competitors.

The information structure and presentation was overwhelming. Data analysis indicated users never found some of the pages of the site and barely spent time on content rich (i.e. verbose) pages.

The restructured site includes the information users were actually looking for and employs eCommerce conversion strategies to improve conversion rates.

A mobile friendly layout now supports the 30% of visitors using this site from their phones.