Sport Innovation/Nike+ FuelBand/Application of the Nike+ FuelBand
The Nike+ FuelBand has been designed for recreational training use as a simple training monitoring tool. The basics of how the band works is through a built in accelerometer, which records your movement and activity throughout the day, and you are then able to sync it with a mobile app or the website to visualize your results. The band is lightweight, and measures a whole range of movement including, but not limited to; running, walking, dancing and basketball. The band is also designed to measure time spent doing each activity, calories burnt as well as acting as a pedometer, measuring steps (Nike, 2012).
Nike has developed a system in order to quantify all the different activity types, and this is NikeFuel. NikeFuel records all the activities performed during the day and converts them to NikeFuel, allowing the amount of activity performed to be quantified, in relation to the intensity and time. The Nike+ FuelBand has built in LED lights, which range from red up to green, allowing the progress to be monitored according to goals set. As the device is being manufactured as a way of tracking training and progress, the device comes with a mobile app, access to the app via a website, or access syncing to a computer via a USB cord, where at the beginning of the day you are able to set your goal in terms of the amount of NikeFuel you wish to accumulate, and this will then sync into your Nike+ FuelBand which will flash green once your goal has been reached. This individualised goal setting process allows for training to be tracked in a specific manner, according to the individuals training requirements and desires (Nike, 2012).
At the end of each training day, the Nike+ fuel band allows you to see your progress in terms of goals reached, your peaks throughout the day and your total calories burnt, and NikeFuel earned through syncing the device with either your mobile app or your computer. As all Nike+ FuelBand devices use the same measuring tool, in terms of NikeFuel, this also gives athletes the ability to compare results with other athletes also using the fuel band, allowing coaches to monitor a whole teams progress and compare between athletes (Nike, 2012).
Ultimately the device is made for not only elite athletes, but also for recreational uses who simply want to track their results in a simple yet quantifiable manner. By using the NikeFuel as a measure, the device is not limited to one particular sport, and allows athletes or non-athletes from a variety of different sports and exercise modes to use the device and gain comparable data. The data recorded from the Nike+ FuelBand will also be able to be compared to other data recorded using any other Nike+ device through the Nike+ site (Nike, 2012).