The Brief

Playtime, for most of us has changed. Once we used to go outside to play, but these days 'playtime' for most of us is an inactive experience. There is a neighbourhood in Sydney where the women have great abs. Their secret? Hula hooping. The modern hula hoop was invented and marketed in 1958, but hooping goes back as far as the Greeks, who like those Sydney women with great abs, used it as a form of exercise. We wanted to transform the hoop so that we could put activity back into playtime. Utilising advances in social technology, we created HOOPLA - the hula hoop for the modern human. We wanted to innovate the hula hoop so that it could be a fitness tool that included targets for the hooper to hit, monitored their hooping progress and fitness and promoted the activity in a fun, social way. A project team comprised of a Director of Applied technology and 3 developers with an initial scoping budget of $5,000 got Hoopla off the ground. The technology is currently in the late prototype phase.

Early hula hoops were made of dried willow, stiff grasses and grapevines. The modern hula hoop was made of plastic. Hoopla will be made of ABS plastic. We ergonomically redesigned the hoop so that we could fit all of the components needed to track hooping inside without destabilising the balance of the hoop. The body of the first prototype was made from irrigation pipe, material that was wide enough to house all of the components. We designed the circuitry so that we were able to effectively measure a series of variables We designed the battery and bluetooth module with a low energy consumption rate. We used a lipo battery allowing up to 48 hours continuous use before needing to be charged. Inside the hoop is a gyroscope and an accelerometer that can detect how fast it's going and what position it's so we can measure the intensity of the hooping being performed. This also measures their rhythm, how many full hoops they complete and how many calories they've burnt. A custom-designed Hoopla app is connected to the hoop, its interface counting and publishing their hooping results while also giving motivation to keep doing more hoops. There is an option to allow the app to connect to the hooper's social media accounts so that the hooper's progress can be shared with their friends. The technology stack is completely controlled by us. We are currently getting moulds made and finalising the circuitry design for mass-production of Hoopla as it's own product. The project has received further scoping funding of $25,000 from Pepsi via agency Colenso BBDO Auckland to advance the Hoopla design process.

The final outcome is for Hoopla to be mass-produced as its own product. The open source nature of Hoopla means that people all over the world will be able to repurpose it for anything they like. This opens up a huge wealth of opportunities in areas like interactive fitness, competitive gaming and even music creation. Hoopla has already been licensed to Pepsi and Google for its first use in a campaign to roll out later this year. The hoop will detect a person's rhythm and then connect to the Google Play Store. From here it selects music from the store that matches the Beats Per Minute and rhythm of the hooping to prolong the activity, making for a more effective workout. The music will only run while the hoop is in use. We applied for a patent in March 2013.