Feeling Good About Working Out

Design Challenge: Star Trac wanted to refresh their design in order to grow their market share by expressing reliability and advanced functionality.

Design Solution: Our designers, after gathering input from individual users, club owners, personal trainers and fitness directors, targeted two areas of opportunity: improving aesthetics and usability. They re-designed the grip handles with gentle curves so that the user, on approach, use, and departure from the machine never makes contact with a hard surface. Rounding elements on the console posts and the console itself conveys a friendlier, more inviting overall feel.

For usability, we designed a new, wider display to incorporate user controllable fans and larger, easier-to-read graphics and interface. The display also features an integrated grip rail across the top because our design research showed that treadmill users often held onto displays for stability. Reinforcing the durability that helps build this brand, our team designed every part on this to be easily repaired or replaced in the rare event of failure. The shape and proportions of the side extrusions, all frame tubes and grip rails accentuate the theme of reliability and simplicity.

For this user-intensive product, we were able to deploy our expertise in Ramsis ergonomic software, the same tool that helps us design BMW cars and private jets.