Gimble: introducing kids to team sports
My team and I carried out this project at Politecnico di Milano,
in partnership with IDEO and Stanford University as part of my
MSc in Product-Service System Design
The problem: how
might we help shy kids enjoy team sports?
Through a
range of Design Thinking methods we came up with a solution:
Gimble.
Gibmle introduces kids to sport using motion sensors and
music
as means to support the physical activities and facilitate the
interaction among them.
Year & location
2015 - Milano, Italy
Category of work
Service Design, Business Design, Industrial Design
Team composition
Service Designers [x5]

What's Gimble
Our team was tasked with finding an unmet need in the sports industry
and we decided to investigate why many young kids don’t enjoy practicing
sports.
We began by carrying out desk research and consulted with
experts to understand the problem and find any untapped opportunity.
Our research showed that shyness is a common factor among kids who
are deemed to be“lazy”.
The period of most rapid development of motor behaviors and
relational skills is between 2 and 6 years of age so we decided to focus
on a solution that would help young kids overcoming shyness barriers
while encouraging physical activity.
By conducting further
research we learned how psychologists rely on music to improve
interactions between people, and facilitate the creation of new
relationships.
Looking at how might we use music to help young
kids get into team sports, we came up with a range of concept ideas and
we focused on one: Gimble.
Gimble is an educational course that introduces kids to sports using
motion sensors and music as playful ways to support physical activities
and encourage interaction with others.
For each thematic
lesson, kids movements are highlighted by sounds, helping them to
perform specific activities. For instance,
when motion sensors detect two kids jumping in sync, the loud
speakers play a cheering “boooing”.
While learning about sensors to assemble a prototype, we
devised a group activity and tested the product-service idea with a few
kids and their families.
As a result, the concept received the
interests of the Italian Psychomotricity Association for exploring
potential further developments.
“The feedback may be very useful for the development of regular motor
activities - walking, running or jumping.
One of the problems of
children is the difficulty in maintaining a rhythm.
Sound feedback
will make it easier - and fun.”
Anne Marie Aline Wille, Psychomotrician and musician
The full story
Exploratory research
The final course of the MSc in Product Service System Design aimed at
guiding students through the entire process of developing a commercially
viable innovative idea to solve an existing problem in a defined
sector.
Our team was tasked to focus on young people in the sport
industry and, having looked at case studies to find inspiration, we
started conducting design research.
By carrying out extensive desk research and asking to parents with
young kids what problems they were experiencing, we found out that,
for many children, engaging in team sports is very
challenging.
Between the two and four years of age, children go through
a phase of "strangers’ anxiety" as they become afraid of people they
don’t know. They experience an abrupt jump from being alone to be in big
groups.
It’s estimated that between 20% and 48% of children have shy
personalities.
We also found that the reason why some kids face
difficulties when interacting for the first time in big group sports is
that they were not introduced early enough to sport. This might lead to
problems later in their life, like difficulties in relationships with
others or in participating in physical activities.
While some argue that it’s never too early to get kids active and involved in team sports, most experts believe that the focus should be on general movement and play, not learning specific sports skills. What’s important is that kids develop self-body awareness and learn to interact with others.
Concept development
As we realised how beneficial can be the use of music to facilitate
interaction between people, we came up with a range of ideas that would
rely on melodies and sounds to help children internalize basic motor
skills while playing with others.
Initially,
we wondered ‘what if a kid could make music by jumping
around?’
and we started to explore this early idea further to see how could it’d
meet our objectives.
We discovered psychomotricity and
‘giocodanza’, two disciplines that help children develop self-awareness
so we reached out to some instructors to learn more about their
activities and see if they were interested in co-designing the idea
further with us.
Over the following few weeks, with their
help and through a series of research and ideation activities, we
refined the concept and got ready to prototype it.
The concept
Gimble is a course dedicated to children between 2 and 6 years of age.
During each lesson, the child is introduced to a range of
activities within an imaginary, playful context. S/He is the character
of an engaging story and the adult who facilitates becomes their guide
and helper.
Kids are eased into each fictional environment with the help of
background sounds. For example, might the theme be ‘a pirate
adventure’, speakers would play adventurous melodies, parrots
chirps, sounds of the sea and cannon explosions.
All participants wear sensors to wrists and ankles to track
their body in the space. Datas are then interpreted by a software and
translated into sounds associated to specific movements. Onomatopeic
sounds are closest to the child, and easier to distinguish. Let’s take
the pirates environment: a jump over an obstacle is underlined by an
adventurous explosion.
Following the theories of psychomotricity, objects in use during each
lesson are chosen for their "non-strong meaning".
With the help of
sounds and music, kids can transform them in their imagination and give
them a different meaning according to each activity’s theme.
In a “pirates” themed lesson, every time a child jumps inside a
rope displayed as a circle, Gimble produces a sound of water,
transforming the rope into a puddler; a ground line becomes the
bridge of the boat, a sheets tunnel becomes the undergrowth of a
forest.
From a technological perspective, we wanted to ensure our
idea was going to be feasible.
We came across some relatively
inexpensive Arduino prototypes that used sensors like gyroscopes to
detect position and movement in the space. To start with, we estimated
the costs of producing those devices by oursleves; however, as we also
looked for any existing solution, we found Notch - a company
producing
exactly the kind of devices we were after.
The business logic
As we moved into designing the business logic, we explored a range of
business models - and we eventually focused on training and licensing
childhood professionals instead of providing the course ourselves, or
selling individual products.
Inspired by business models like the
one Zumba relies on, we considered how could our course scale up
further, and envisioned a system of additional services, upgrades and
even activities for entirely different audiences.
Mapping the key elements of our ideas on a business model canvas
helped understanding the full business logic
and estimating logistic costs associated to providing training courses.
Looking at the average price asked by potential competitors, we
established a starting licensing price.
For the supply and
development of the product we realised that estabilishing a partnership
with Notch would be the most cost-effective way forward. Notch is a
company that produces wearable sensors designed to be attached to the
extremities of the body to track and capture specific body movements. We
assumed the partnership would be of their interest as, at the time, the
company was about to release an API to open it’s product up to third
party developers’ ideas.
When it came to designing
activities and exercises,
we thought we’d rely on the expertise of those psychomotriciants
who helped us defining the idea
in the first place and who showed interest in extending the partnership
further.
Prototyping phase
To bring the idea to life and learn what would people actually think
about it, we involved psychomotricy teachers, gyms instructor, kids and
their parents to prototype Gimble.
Some of the questions we
wanted to explore include:
> “How would kids actually react to our idea? Would they
actually get excited about producing sounds by moving around?”
> “Would parents think Gimble’s value proposition differs from
any other option already on the market? How much would they be
willing to pay for the course?”
> “Looking at the theories of Psychomotricity, would the concept
be valid? Would the product find any further application in the
discipline?
> “Would any gym be interested in partnering up to offer a
course like Gimble? ”
The activity took place in a nonprofit association for mums
based in Milan. As the coordinators showed interest in testing Gimble,
we organised an event and promoted it on the association’s social
channels and collected a number of subscriptions.
The evening of the event, we welcomed a small number of kids and their
mums and introduced them to the activities.
We prototyped a
fictional lesson from Gimble course: we performed an adventure story,
which suggested a path of exercises for the kids - developed with the
help of psychomotricity instructors.
To simulate our main
device’s features, we initially thought we’d rely on smartphone’s
gyroscope sensors to produce music,
but as that could distract kids and be heavy to carry around, we
decided to opt for a simpler option instead.
We used a sound sampler to imitate Gimble sensors behaviour, and every
time a kid performed a correct movement, we played a specific sound.
At the end of the story - and activities, we sat down with
the participants, had a snack together and asked them a few simple
questions to hear about their experience. We eventually interviewed
their parents to gather feedback and understand
whether they’d consider a full-lenght course for their
children.
Overall, the prototype proved to work well. The kids who took part in
the lesson loved it, and their parents were really keen to receiving
updates on any further development.
We learned a lot about how different kids behave and would respond
to activities like the one we proposed and got to understand more
about what and how would mums be keen to invest for their
children.
As towards the end of the course our team managed to
successfully validate the concept idea , we spent the last few days
having fun exploring other activities: how about using sounds to make an
inflatable ballon into an adventurous “Star Wars” lightsaber? Or,
perhaps, into a gracious fairy’s magic wand?