American Football vs Fashion

How to Design a Play. How to Design to Play.

As a former server at Outback Steakhouse, I remember customers crowded around the bar area desperate to get a good seat to watch the football game. I would blankly look up at the TV screens and wondered what was so special about football. Through this project, I learned that while we view American football game plans as simplistic drawings, there is complexity and importance in how coaches choose and design specific plays for their strategic value. I combined my interest in fashion and knowledge of football to create an infographic that shows they may not be so different after all.

Skills: Design Thinking, Cross-Pollination, Communication Design

THE CHALLENGE

Choose a concept or product to explore and research how it has been designed. This can mean the design of the product itself, the concept, strategy, process, or any design element that applies.

What may look like grown men fighting over a pointy ball is actually a $15 billion industry. My goal was to decipher the strategies behind football, learn the value of the X and O’s in a coach’s playbook.

APPROACH & PROCESS

Since I did not have much knowledge about football to begin with, I essentially started from square one. The research phase was a necessary learning curve for me to answer my questions. I had to first learn how do you even play football and how do you design a play? Another component was fleshing out how much risk is involved in a well or poorly designed game plan and what ways design is utilized in game strategies.

I dove into my primary and secondary research watching football coach demos on Youtube, learning about player positions, forcing myself to play Madden NFL (the American football video game series), and even downloading a game play generator to learn about the possible outcomes in a game.

 INSIGHTS

There are many underlying factors that contribute to designing a successful football strategy and executing a hit or miss play. Observing players’ strengths, coaching direction, and analyzing the opponent’s play patterns are influential figures in deciding how a play is created in the first place. Every strategy and play has its own personality that serves a purposeful outcome. The mission is not actually beating the players themselves, but calling and performing the plays designed to make the opponent’s strategies turn from what could have been well-designed to poorly designed.

Click here to view my full research paper on American Football Game Strategies