Benjamin Hubert of experience design agency LAYER has designed PLAYR, a smart wearable for elite aspiring football players for leading sports analytics and tech company Catapult. PLAYR enables athletes to track performance, improve their game, and compete against other players. The project was designed and developed over a period of 18 months from start to market launch.
Catapult is a leading sports analytics company that creates the wearable and analytic tech behind the success of some of the world’s most elite sporting teams. The brand currently works with over 1500 elite teams around the world, including Chelsea FC, Leicester City, the England cricket team, Golden State Warriors and the Scotland rugby team. PLAYR is the first consumer product the company has launched, bringing a traditionally elite-only tracking product to a global audience of amateur football players.
SmartPod
PLAYR comprises a smart pod, a high performance vest, and an app. The pod is inserted into the garment, which is worn underneath or over a football jersey, and sits at the top of the athlete’s back. The pod communicates with GPS networks and the PLAYR app to track the athlete during training or a game, including distance covered, sprint distance, Pitch heat map, and player load.
PLAYR has been designed to seamlessly integrate into both training and match situations, to offer statistics to the players and teams in order to improve their game. The PLAYR pod has smart activation, and activates with magnets located inside the vest when inserted in the pocket. LEDs on the PLAYR pod communicate the GPS signal strength, battery life, and charging. When illuminated, these LEDs reveal a pattern in the reverse of the top surface of the pod to communicate the technological high performance nature of the system. The PLAYR pod is designed to be wirelessly recharged between uses on the induction charging pad.
The design language of the PLAYR pod is softly muscular, and the hexagonal form represents strength and performance.
SmartVest
The PLAYR garment is a high performance vest, created using advanced high performance textiles. The integrated pocket for the pod is located at the base of the neck – a position chosen due to minimum impact in competitive team sports. The pocket is padded to prevent any impact injury, and the pod is inserted into this pocket from outside the garment for ease of access to the pod. SmartCoach App
The PLAYR app allows an athlete to track their performance, and offers a smart coach to improve the user’s game. It also allows the user to compete against friends and peers, and benchmark themselves against professional players. Providing unique performance insight, the SmartCoach system is a world first. PLAYR has handpicked the best professional football coaches and sports scientists to provide individually tailored advice on preparation, performance and recovery; the pillars for success at professional clubs. With SmartCoach insight, consumers for the first time can benchmark their match and training data against the greatest players in the world, as well as their football peers and community.
The app has been designed for ease of use, with simple, intuitive UI. The high contrast design is ideal for use outside where the app will be predominantly used on the sidelines of a pitch.
LAYER x Catapult
LAYER was also behind the recent re-brand for Catapult, including brand identity, art direction and tone of voice. The creative team at LAYER took a holistic approach to the project, focusing on simplifying how Catapult communicates complex information. The logo mark features the same softly angular forms as the PLAYR system to create a unified high performance design language in tune with the mindset of the Catapult audience.
Who is Catapult
Catapult is the world leader in elite performance analytics, used by over 1500 teams in 35 sports and produces the athlete monitoring systems used by elite sporting teams around the world to inform decisions in training and play. Since 2006, their technologies have been proven by elite athletes, and validated by independent scientific research institutes. The system quantifies athlete performance using cutting-edge positional tracking combined with precise inertial sensors.
The Catapult story began in Australia, when the country’s Olympic team returned from the 1976 Montreal Games without a single gold medal. To avoid repeating this performance, the Australian government invested heavily in the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), creating a world-leading academy for the country’s best young athletes. It was here that the founders of Catapult began to measure all facets of athlete performance in an effort to improve sport through evidence based science. They soon developed wearable sensors, and the technology was developed for Australian athletes competing at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. Australia won more medals than ever before – a total of 58 medals, including 17 gold. Following this success, the product was commercialised and Catapult was born in late 2006.
In detail
• PLAYR is the first consumer product Catapult has launched, bringing a traditionally elite-only tracking product to a global audience of amateur football players
• PLAYR comprises a Smartpod, a high performance Smartvest, and a SmartCoach app
• The pod communicates with GPS networks and the PLAYR app to track the athlete during training or a game, including distance covered, sprint distance, pitch heatmap, and player load
• The PLAYR garment is a high performance Smartvest with an integrated pocket at the base of the neck
• The PLAYR Smart Coach app allows an athlete to track their performance, and offers a smart coach to improve the user’s game. It also allows the user to compete against friends and peers, and benchmark themselves against professional players
• LAYER was also behind the recent rebrand of Catapult
