Football Training Aid

I will always remember this project as a pivot point in my designing development path; I say this because until this point, I had been using a more intuitive approach to my work, my burning curiosity lead the way to explore ideas, materials, practices; and the obsession to materialise my thoughts got me developing designs through hands-on trial and error. However, this project was different, it was the first time i used a more systematic approach to tackle a significant problem; at least for me, a passionate-relentless football player.
During lock down, it was impossible train and play football as much i used to - Pre Covid, i was training everyday and having two matches per week for my football club.

All of the sudden; training sessions were cancelled, meeting people wasn't allowed, and I do not have siblings to train with. On the top of that, the news was very frightening...difficult times! As a result, I started worrying that i would lose progress in my development and speaking with my team mates, this was a huge concern across the board. It is not only about fitness levels, it is about losing responsiveness, speed and accuracy on the pitch - These skills can only be provided through match experience & training time; and this is because it is very difficult to replicates the same conditions on your own without a team; e.g. 360 play, testing touch and passing, speed and accuracy drills. Listening to some podcasts, this situation also affected professional players ranging from the top all the way to Sunday leagues. As a result, i started researching products online that could offer match experience training; the criteria was: a product that my team mates and I could use on our own, that could emulate a football match in anyone's back yard, affordable, lightweight, strong, durable, portable and low maintenance (and sustainable materials if that was possible)?


I went through a comprehensive web-based product research; found some products, but they did not quite hit the criteria. Therefore, I decided to tackle this problem myself, I had a relentless desire and hunger to create the first product that would hit all the criteria set and that more importantly would help reduce our worries about loosing match skills.

Trial testing and expert opinions helped me to understand where the improvement needed to take place.

For example, the aesthetics of the product, materials, the time to be assembled, the maximum weight for the product to be portable. The way the welding took place - the joints- instead of just welding on the exterior, have the hooks already friction fitted to the aluminium poles, and then welded having a more durable product, as opposed the hooks snapping off easily.

Through what i can only call extremely deep flow state, a development and evolution process took place, a product was born that hit every criteria set for.

I still use this product when I'm training either on my own and with friends!

Over time, as I've developed, I've identified quite a few things that could have been done differently and still need improvement. It is always great to get many sets of eyes looking, testing and evaluating a product, feedback is always appreciated!

Here is the formal complete history of the product from idea- concepts- sketches- materials- processes to final product, feel free to have a look and dive into the entire process.
file:///C:/Users/joeja/Downloads/55309_5355_JACOMB_05.pdf