<aside> 🎾 What is OneCourt? OneCourt gives sports teams and stadiums a way to connect to Blind and Visually Impaired fans. Using computer vision, we can track the location of a ball on a field or court. We translate the positional data into trackable vibrations on the surface of our device. These haptics intuitively convey ball position in real-time.
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The case study is detailed and has multiple sections, if you want to look in-depth at particular process, follow the table of contents below:
I joined Jerred Mace and the OneCourt team in February 2022, of my senior year at the UW. When I heard Jerred pitch at our Lavin All Student meeting, I was already weeks into working on a startup idea of my own, but improving accessibility to live sports felt more impactful. I joined the team with the goal of helping OneCourt compete in the Dempsey Startup Competition. We went on to place 3rd out of 80+ teams and raise $10,000 in winnings. As Product Lead, I spent my time on user research, market research, and go-to-market. As we’ve progressed, I’ve stepped into the role of COO to focus on go-to-market, product strategy, and fundraising.
In his pitch, Jerred said he watched a video of a deaf-blind man experiencing a soccer game through touch. An interpreter moved his hands around a game board with embossed lines, so he could follow the game. Jerred believed you could replicate this experience using technology. That way, Blind or Visually Impaired fans wouldn’t need to rely on an interpreter to follow along.
https://youtu.be/74nnLh0Vdcc?t=34
Almost 300 million people worldwide are restricted from enjoying live sports because of their blindness or low vision. According to the CDC, more than 4.2 million Americans aged 40 years and older suffer from uncorrectable vision impairment, out of which 1.02 million who are blind. This number is expected to more than double by 2050 due to an aging population and increasing epidemics of diabetes and other chronic diseases.
When I joined the team, this was the extent of our understanding of the problem space. All of our insights so far had been from secondary research. Before we could move forward with business and product development, I wanted to validate the problem. We sought to answer the following two questions through user research:
Yes. In fact, there is an assumption that the Blind and Visually Impaired lack the interest or ability to participate in popular forms of leisure. They are extremely capable and enjoy activities like reading, hiking, exercising, watching sports, and more.
There is a clear and demonstrated interest in following sports within the Blind and Visually Impaired community. These fans would benefit by having access to our device, and could bring it with them to sports games. According to a Forbes article:
The sights, sounds, and sociability of being at a match are impossible to replicate. It’s why blind and partially sighted people are just as passionate about attending matches as anyone else. There are 5.1 million visually impaired people in the U.K., of which 43% identify as soccer fans.