Seattle Sport Sciences

Project

Isotechne AI-driven sports analytics

My role

Director of UX

Business problem

SSS had a powerful suite of technologies for semantically understanding soccer footage, but there was no product. They needed a product to sell to sports franchises.

Solution

Architected and oversaw development of a sports analytics application that seamlessly blends data visualization with the physicality of soccer.

Outcome

As a direct result of my work, Seattle Sport Sciences have sold their analytics products to major European soccer franchises who are notoriously difficult customers.

Impressive technology but no product

SSS has a powerful suite of AI-based technologies for semantically understanding soccer footage. It uses technology developed in partnership with Microsoft to capture the movements of players, as well as ball launchers that can subject players to standardized scenarios. At the time, they had no product. In order to sell their technology to soccer franchises, it would have to be productized.

Sophisticated visuals open up the black box of AI

Our research made it clear that the target audience of players, managers, and coaches did not want to simply take on faith what AI told them. Every decision would have to be explained and the software's "rationale" opened up to interpretation. We designed an interface that conveys detailed information to the user, ranging from spatial relationships between players to a multivariate analysis of "cognitive factors", shown in the green heatmap at bottom.