Creating safer experiences for athletes

Precision Approach is a hardware and software product that helps skiers approach and make jumps more safely. It integrates a Lidar sensor with an app and server that tracks an oncoming skier’s speed and their landing zone, then provides feedback on whether they need to speed up, slow down, or abort their attempt.

With decades of experience within ski slopes and instruction, the Precision Approach team sought our expertise to design their marketing website, develop a user-friendly mobile app, and contribute to the creation of hardware alongside supplementary software for their product.

Diving deep into the realm of skiing

Through a series of stakeholder workshops, our team closely collaborated with Precision Approach to gain insights into the skiing industry. We aimed to understand the specific challenges and journeys faced by ski resort managers and skiers, particularly during peak ski seasons.

From our workshop findings with Precision Approach, we distilled four goals for our project that cater to both business and user needs:

1. Prioritize safety and prevent injuries.
2. Improve users’ ski skills and overall confidence while skiing.
3. Foster social connections between skiers and build reputation.
4. Ensure leisure and convenience for skiers’ lifestyles

Reaching the right people at the right time

Our ideation and design processes began with the creation of a marketing website aimed at reaching resort managers interested in installing Precision Approach towers alongside ski jumps at their resorts. During brainstorming, we developed three distinct visions for the site, each using a different strategy to target the ski resort industry and offer unique value propositions to resort managers.

The first iteration emphasized the value of Precision Approach by generating interest in improved safety for resorts and better jumps for athletes, while also incorporating lead collection features. In contrast, the second version focused on raising awareness about the general lack of safety knowledge within the ski industry, using educational resources to drive lead engagement. Meanwhile, the third version showcased the early stages of the product, featuring stakeholder updates and case studies that highlighted how Precision Approach was enhancing resorts throughout development.

Each iteration applied a different form of storytelling to communicate the broader values of Precision Approach to both ski resort managers and athletes. In the end, we chose to move forward with the first iteration, as it offered the strongest appeal to both business owners and skiers.

Building a platform for customers

With the website now ready to be shared with professionals within the industry, Goji continued along the product roadmap to accomplish two main milestones. The first goal was to create a mobile app that would accompany the software. Geared towards athletes, the app would provide exclusive ski jump footage while also serving as a social platform for seamless video sharing within the skiing community. The second goal was to confirm, build, and effectively test software to be used alongside Lidar hardware based on a prototype provided by Precision Approach.

After compiling an MVP feature set during our discovery workshops with Precision Approach, our team designed a mobile app for users to view and share ski jump footage at resorts with Precision Approach towers. This included the implementation of a tiered monetization model that made it accessible for seasonal skiers without creating a significant barrier to entry.

Jumping from software to hardware

Following the app’s design, our team focused on seamlessly integrating Lidar technology by creating and developing software that tracks oncoming skiers’ speed, determines their optimal landing zone, and offers real-time feedback on adjustments needed, whether it be speeding up, slowing down, or aborting their attempts. Crucially, this information would be recorded and conveyed to users through a light indicator on a physical tower that would be installed alongside a ski jump.

Our challenge was ensuring that the hardware not only functioned accurately, but was also visible in the challenging snowy conditions typical of a ski jump environment. This integration would effectively enhance the safety and precision of ski jumps, providing skiers with invaluable insights to optimize their performance while recording footage that could be purchased by the user through the mobile app.

It’s alive

After some trial and error, our team successfully got a series of prototype towers up and running. With functioning test towers in place, the Precision Approach team secured approval from the general manager and legal team at Sierra Tahoe to install test towers at their resort.

Currently, the team uses these towers to collect data and refine the technical systems behind them—making adjustments to lidar object detection, clustering, and calibration based on skier feedback. With the towers installed, Precision Approach can now access skier data from anywhere, as the hardware regularly self-updates, reconfigures, and sends constant updates to the database.

A safer future for ski resorts

Integrating both software and hardware proved to be a unique challenge, emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and adaptability. After the upcoming ski season in 2024, Precision Approach and Goji will continue to use collected data from skiers and make ongoing adjustments to tracking speed, measuring distances, and determining skier sizes. These adjustments will provide proper guidance to skiers by telling them the proper speed they need to go at and ensuring their safety for an optimized ski jump.