Precor Commerical Fitness Display
Fitness display and optional personal viewing screen
This project was a new design of Precor’s primary display and entertainment options for all of the commercial cardio fitness products. This new design incorporated “integrated entertainment” with the acquisition of an entertainment company called Cardio Theater. The solution allowed for a 12” personal viewing screen (TV) option and a wireless ambient entertainment option to be added to create multiple entertainment configurations across 7 different commercial category applications.
As the Director of Design, my primary contributions included creative direction, industrial design, interaction design, display ergonomics, vendor sourcing, TV screen ID & engineering, CAD, prototyping, price negotiations, and packaging design.
This design solution won the 2007 IDEA Bronze medal for product design.
The design solution included the industrial design, interaction design, product development and design for manufacturability of the main cardio display and three entertainment variations that could be easily added on at the original install or after market.
A great deal of time was spent studying the ergonomic challenges of passive viewing and physical interaction with user interface elements while moving dynamically during a workout. The most significant insight from this study led us to a 12" display with no adjustment that could satisfy users from a 95 percentile male to a 5th percentile female. We eliminate the complexity and challenges of dynamic adjustment which reduced customer service calls and the overall product cost dramatically. The 12" screen also allowed for better visibility by the user around the club.
Precor sells their products internationallly and supports 13 languages around the world. This icon study explored the possbility of using universal iconography for important machine controls like speed up/down and resistance up/down. This allowed us to produce "global" solutions that did not require localization by country or region.
The final interface solution had to work for over 7 major cardio categories and a variety programming and entertainment options. The signature D-pad Tap controls at the bottom had single and double machine control options.
The 12" personal viewing screen was easily added on to the main display using a basic 1" x 3" steel tube mounting bar. This "integrated" entertainment look was the first of its kind in the fitness industry.
My contribution also included all of the 3D CAD development of every piece of the display and entertainment solution as well as all of color/material/finish solutions and graphic design of every label.
When the entertainment solutions were added, there was a headphone jack that could be added to the chin of the main display to give maximum chord length to users while they were working out.
The dipslay could be purchased with no entertainment, an audio only entertainment option, or a full personal TV viewing screen.
This solution became a universal display for every piece of Precor cardio fitness equipment including the Adaptive Motion Trainer (AMT) designed one year after the launch of the initial display.
