kairo

Kairo is a computer-vision based software that provides athletes and coaches in artistic sports (e.g. diving, gymnastics, figure skating) with real-time, sport-specific metrics in order to better quantify progress and training.

Kairo was built during SEP (Sigma Eta Pi Entrepreneurship Society), USC's highly-selective startup incubator, where new founders discover, build, sell, and pitch a startup within 10 weeks. We pitched Kairo to 300 attendees on Demo Day along with three judges, including the founder of Z Fellows, Cory Levy, and executives from General Matter. Kairo was awarded $500 at our first demo event from an angel investor.

Athletes in artistic sports, particularly diving, are evaluated on a sub-10 second routine by a panel of 7 judges based on approach, takeoff, execution, entry, and difficulty.

After speaking with numerous collegiate-level athletes and coaches across Southern California (e.g. USC, Caltech, Redlands), we found that athletes and coaches feel frustrated by the lack of objectivity in scoring artistic sports. Judges often rely on plain sight or simple replay systems that provide no numeric insights to base their scores on, with limited feedback for the athletes themselves.

Presently, collegiate diving teams rely on outdated tablet and tripod systems to record and replay under-10-second diving routines. Coaches struggle to measure their athletes' progress over time, provide detailed feedback on tucks and entries, and predict scores.

The challenge: develop a platform for coaches and athletes to replay dives alongside numeric insights to track progress over time.

My branding process begins with moodboarding using tools such as Cosmos, Pinterest, Mobbin, and more. I look for trends in sports technology, motion tracking, and sports videography. I also keep note of trends in color combinations, as well as different hues and saturations of blues and how they pair with other colors.

I began iterating logo designs based on inspiration I saw on Cosmos, keeping in mind motifs related to diving, water sports, motion capture, and more.

I began by listing out the design requirements needed to create our basic minimum viable product to show our design partner, Caltech. I held multiple customer discovery and user experience calls with the head diving coach and assistant diving coach at Caltech, which influenced the features we built out.

I explored different layout options including where to put the video player, the original video, the generated 3D model, output statistics, and more.

The end result is Kairo, a comprehensive analytics platform providing detailed insights into an athlete's dive through precise computer vision technology. Athletes are able to view their exact positioning throughout the dive, and Kairo analyzes the accuracy and speed of their tucks and somersaults. Kairo's proprietary algorithm draws and accounts for multiple direction vectors throughout the athlete's body, allowing it to quantify the precision with which athletes maintain a tuck, enter the water, or complete a somersault.

As my team and I established relationships throughout the industry, we have amassed hours of privately recorded footage. This has allowed us to develop an algorithm that is incredibly well-equipped for the nuances of professional diving.

Kairo stands out from its competitors as the only diving software on the market offering real-time 3D tracking, automatic performance metrics, compatibility with any camera, and insights tailored to diving.