ASICS
MY ROLE
Research
Concept Development
Prototyping & Testing
Handball- and volleyball players train and play matches in warm and sweaty sport halls. Training and matches can last several hours a session. The built-up heat inside the sport shoes is insufficiently released which can increase the chance of blisters and skin irritations.
Asics Indoor Sports Shoe Ventilation is a concept solution to increase the ventilation of shoes for indoor sports like handball and volleyball.
During the minor Sports Innovation I worked in a multidisciplinary team, consisting of industrial designers, a mechanical engineer and an aerospace engineer, to improve the ventilation of indoor sport shoes in collaboration with Asics. The properties of indoor sport shoes are constantly being improved: durability, grip, traction, stability, comfort, et cetera. During this project more attention is given to the amount of heat a shoe can dissipate.
It's all about the process.
The design progress started with analysing the heat dissipation by conducting several experiments with indoor sport shoes of Asics and its competitors. After analysing the data the ideation stage started where mock-ups were created. From there, a proof-of-concept was tested to validate the improvement of heat dissipation.
The more experiments you make the better.
Several experiments were conducted to examine this heat dissipation. Different brands of indoor shoes for handball players were tested by capturing the release of the temperature using an infra-red camera. Temperature sensors were used to discover the "hotspots" of the foot during a training. These experiments were documented in a scientific paper which got published, available through this link.
Based on the results of the experiments, a concept solution was created to increase heat dissipation as well as maintain the performance and support of indoor sport shoes.
