Innovative Sportswear Design

In the Summer of 2018 I had the pleasure of working with the high-end sportswear designer Regattasport. Regattasport creates Olympic-level performance sportswear for rowing, dragon-boating, and a variety of other naval sports. When I was hired I was given a very open-ended goal: develop and implement new features for the rowing line.

Personal contribution: ideated problems and points of improvement within existing sportswear, performed many rounds of user testing with athletes of all different demographics and skill levels (from middle school-aged novice athletes to members of the US Olympic rowing team), manufactured prototypes using sewing, Arduino, and FDM 3D printing, developed manufacturing plans, communicated ideas to a general audience.

Ideation

I started this project by taking a few days to go out and row as much as possible, talk with athletes, and tear apart as much rowing sportswear as I could. This gave me key insights into improvements and features that could set Regattasport’s products apart from the competition.

I then sorted my brainstorming into categories, which I then presented to my superiors for them to determine which routes they wanted me to pursue.

preventing back injuries using data analysis

One of the routes I explored involved adding extra support material to rowing suits in order to prevent back injuries. To gain more of an insight into this important subject, I developed an experimental setup that consists of several accelerometers fixed to an athlete’s back. When the athlete rows, this accelerometer data is saved to an SD card for later analysis.

I had athletes of many different ages and backgrounds use my experimental setup and the data I collected from it (while not public) gave valuable insights for the future of the product including the key points on the back that experience the most stress during rowing and in what direction.

improving comfort

Almost two-thirds of my summer was spent designing custom, antimicrobial seat padding that drastically improves the user experience of the suit.

Lots of user testing, measuring, sewing, and manufacturing plans went into the size, shape, and placement methods of these pads and they are currently being developed into full-scale products.