Researching the Impact of Female Endurance Athletes' Reproductive Lifecycle on Performance
Challenge
- Analysis of current perceptions and habits as they relate to training and the fluctuations in female endurance athletes' cycle and stage of their reproductive life.
- Produce an informative piece to encourage collaboration across sports and healthcare industries and encourage the development of tools specific to hormonal rhythms and the development of digital tool tracking analysis for female endurance athletes.
Role
UX Researcher
Action
- Conduct research exploring both historical and current knowledge.
- Investigate successful collaborations within the sports space.
- Research tools for reporting and tracking to inform decision-making for athletes.
- Execute competitive analysis.
- Develop user personas.
Results
Findings support more research on this topic and the development of a comprehensive application combining fitness tracking and reproductive cycle information specific to the female endurance athlete.
Deliverables
- Research Plan
- Competitive Analysis
- User Personas
- Video Pitch
- Presentation
Research
The women selected to participate in interviews and surveys were actively training for an endurance sport. The infographic below shares some of the insights gleaned.
Output from Research
- Using qualitative and quantitative research, three female endurance athlete personas were created.
- Each persona represents a female endurance athlete at a different point in her journey in endurance sports and her female reproductive cycle.
- Visually articulating and understanding the needs of each athlete.
Competitive Analysis
- Explore tools to understand and gauge how training output and body chemistry affect performance.
- Found digital fitness APPS exist for logging fitness goals and tracking data from training.
- Several APPS explicitly focused on tracking a woman's cycle and symptoms.
- RESULT: No application combines fitness tracking and cycle information to provide a comprehensive look specific for the female endurance athlete.
Knowledge Share Possibilities
- Utilization of genetic information collected and analyzed informing customized workouts, nutritional needs, health and wellness traits.
- Linking genetic and hormonal knowledge with real-time training data allows for a more complete picture of the female endurance athlete's body, thus more informed decision-making.
Conclusion
- Like most industries, the endurance industry is looking to change its approach to more of an information-based model.
- A unified vision of acquiring more data on how women differ from men in endurance events is needed.
- Partnerships with top industry leaders such as USA Triathlon, the Olympics, Science in Sport, etc. have already led to pockets of new knowledge creation.
- Explicit knowledge of gender-specific research, as well as obtaining individual women endurance athletes' tacit knowledge, will help build insights to shape the endurance industry as it relates to women.
- Women-specific endurance events are helping to cultivate a safe space for women to learn things like how to swim in the open water, bike long distances, and nutritional needs.
- Still to be explored in depth is how a woman's cycle and chemistry affect performance.
- Using this distinctive method of perception as a way for individuals who have varying backgrounds and experiences to prompt knowledge-creation, reconcile contradictions, and make distinctions will help create a model for the industry and give women the ability to gain access to more data as it relates to their body chemistry and endurance sport.
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