Research Paper

Over 70 percent of all Americans are overweight. This is a ridiculously large number of people considering as of 2018 the population was over 327 million in the U.S. That would make for more than 228 million overweight people in just the United States. A huge factor in this number is lack of knowledge, as most people don't know how to eat healthily and stay or get fit, and for those people or those who simply want extra information on their everyday exercise, we offer Soleful. Soleful is an insertable sole that can fit into almost any shoe that counts and tracks your every-day steps and can transmit numbers real-time via Bluetooth. 

    This product can help these people because by giving them a way to always track their steps throughout the day, it reduces excuses, and because the sole fits into any type of shoe, it can be used on any occasion allowing you to see your steps throughout the day. A regular sole that would be sold online or in stores could range in price between roughly 40 dollars up to around 80 dollars, so our sole with a step tracking system would most likely end up costing about the same as a mid-range regular sole. The target user consists of any human that walks, making the size of the soles' demographic very diverse as the shape would allow it to fit in almost any size shoe. Obesity itself affects more than one hundred million Americans and is the cause of one in five deaths each year. Lots of the people suffering from obesity often feel embarrassed working out or going to the gym do to their bodies, which leads them to not work out at all worsening the problem, having a visible fitness tracker on their wrists would likely make them feel embarrassed therefore having a fitness tracker hidden within their shoes would be a great solution.

    While obesity would be a great demographic for this product to target it would not be the only one that this product could attract.  According to a survey done by Gallup, an estimated nineteen percent of Americans own a fitness tracker, and as of right now the most common type of fitness tracking device is a watch or wristband of some sort such as Fitbit or Apple watch. The problem with that is that and an estimated-only thirty-two percent of Americans wear watches leaving sixty-eight percent of Americans who don't like wearing watches, a decent number of Americans use fitness trackers and an even larger number of Americans doesn't like wearing watches and most people wear shoes, do to this we can see that there would be a market for fitness trackers that is not the traditional wristband or watch design, as clearly most people don't like wearing watches.

    We would improve on this design by choosing a completely different product to turn into a fitness tracker, a shoe, but not the shoe itself rather the sole of the shoe, while some sole fitness trackers such as the NURVV do exist they tend to cost upward of two hundred dollars, while our product would be well below one hundred dollars. We would be able to keep prices so much lower by eliminating unnecessary functions such as the GPS to focus on the actual step metrics that would matter far more than location when tracking fitness, which would have been the original intent of the Soleful. 

    Soleful would work by having, a small thin pressure sensor that tracks whenever you apply force on to the sole, every release and impact would count as one step. To allow easy viewing of your data, a Bluetooth module would transmit the data to an app on a phone which would display any metrics the Soleful would record. The actual controller would be an Arduino Nano to reduce the size and make the product as comfortable to have in your shoe as possible. The battery will be very compact, likely a triple-A battery to keep the size as small as possible, it would have a button to turn the Soleful on or off, and an RGB that indicates the status of the Soleful.  Not having a GPS like some other fitness tracking soles allows it to keep the price significantly lower. Do to every component being placed inside the shoe itself, it would not change the look of the shoe itself whatsoever, and no one would even be able to tell the user is wearing a fitness tracker.

    In Conclusion, Soleful would be a solution to two problems. Soleful would be a great solution to someone looking to lose weight that doesn't know where to begin, Soleful would also be great for someone who is interested in having a fitness tracker but doesn't like to wear watches, doesn't want to be seen with a fitness tracker on, or doesn't want to spend two hundred dollars or more. Soleful would work by using a pressure sensor that transmits data to an app to allow you to easily see your steps without changing the look of the shoes, keeping it comfortable and discreet. Soleful would be a great choice for anyone who wants to measure their steps.