I wanted to design a shoe that was made for more than one consumer…with the USB chip built into the footbed, the shoe reads the performance of the player on the court with multiple sensors connected in different parts of the footbed and the USB can also be connected to a “Game” unit and record your performance while playing a video game as well. As your performance excels on the court or playing the game, the color of the bootie slowly changes…this happens with the help from the fiber optics built into the bootie which is powered by the USB chip that is in the footbed of the shoe. As you play along you will notice different colors of Jordan’s early past show up on the bootie as well as different logos on the bootie top area. The final bootie color is all black with the “Wings” logo on the bootie top…to show Ultimate Player “Bad Ass” on and off the court.

-Lorin Welander II

Design feedback by Michael DiTullo:

As Creative Director at frog, a design firm whose very mission it is to innovate for the connected world, I think absolutely there will come a time when low power sensor hubs will be able to be in almost everything, and they will have the ability to connect and communicate with one another. The win here would have been to put sensors in the shoe, the ball, the court, and had them all talk to one another to tell a deeper story of the game, to make the invisible into the visible. Things like this are actually happening in NASCAR, where you can go online and watch a realtime 3D rendered version of a race because of the sensors in the cars. To make this concept sing, showing the shoe is not enough, show us what it does.

Design feedback by Brett Golliff:

The moment I read this description I thought to myself “with the right execution that is the future of footwear.” I would say this entry is the most far-fetched but yet believable entry we received. I love how you thought of tying it in with a videogame because that provides the company another opportunity of collaboration to gain more viewers of their product. Opportunities of collaborating with other companies are huge and don’t always make sense but this does. Way to think past just designing an aesthetic! But the aesthetic is what kept it from pushing it over the top for me.