Team 5: Toe Guard

Kyle Brown, William (Will) Perez, Melissa Valencia, Marques White

Problem Statement

Defensive and offensive line football players experience toe pain due to frequent direct impacts. There are currently no preventative measures or treatments provided for these discomforts.

Magnitude + Frequency

Have you ever been stepped on during a game?

Out of a 22 football player survey

Average pain level on scale 1-10: 7

Stakeholders

Users

Our target users for this project are athletes that wear cleats and are involved in a contact sport. This includes athletes such as football and rugby players.

Purchasers

We first aim to reach athletes that seek toe protection for themselves and concerned parents trying to increase their children’s safety and protect their toes. Eventually, purchasers would include sports teams and athletic shoewear companies.

State of the Art

Silicone Toe Covers

Silicone toe covers do not address the issue of direct force and impact on the toes, as their intended design is to minimize friction and thus alleviate toe pain. Following a one-size fits all model, a user must adjust the individual toe covers to fit their sizing requirements prior to usage. A limitation in the toe covers’ application and use arises given the possibility of incorrect sizing in regards to toe length. The use of this product targets toe pain and discomforts such as blisters, callus, and irritation mainly stemming from extended shoe wear rather than direct force on the toes. Given this use case, the silicone toe caps do not provide adequate protection for cleated athletes, as they cannot withstand physical impact and, with increased mobility, may lead to additional sweat, generating discomfort with their usage.

Shin Guards

Shin guards with toe protection attempt to provide extended protection to an athlete by combining a shin guard and a foot guard. This product explicitly targets athletes in the martial arts realm, as opposed to athletes who require cleats and other protective gear in their practice. The apparent bulkiness of the product may interfere with an athlete’s mobility, affecting their performance and possibly causing discomfort. Upon analyzing its design and application on foot, the product is not malleable to the athlete’s foot but rather sits on top of the foot as a cover. If used alongside a cleat, it may not fit seamlessly and alter the cleat’s frame leading to a need for adjustments to ensure comfortability. Although this product does provide toe protection, its design does not fulfill the needs of athletes who wear cleats for enhanced performance.

Cleat Toe Protector

Patent: US20150040440A1

Despite the cleat toe protector being marketed as a product for cleat usage, its design and application prove its incapability for such. As an external attachment, there exist limitations in terms of its legality in accordance with NCAA Football regulations. The product should be covered or padded to minimize its capability of endangering other athletes when in use. Yet, the proposed durability and strength of this product imply otherwise, as it can withstand physical impact and thus have the potential to inflict further force onto another object. This product relies on screw-on or detachable cleats as it must be secured through the cleat’s studs, thus creating a need for a product adaptable to both detachable and molded cleats. The product is designed for a limited subset of athletes and only accommodates best to certain sizes. Athletes with a range of cleat styles and sizes may experience discomfort with its use. As a non-compliant product in terms of its design and legality, the cleat toe protector is not a feasible product for athletes to use during performance.

Specifications

Ease of Use

Our product's goal was to protect the user without any additional discomfort or pain. Ease of use was weighted as the highest of our specifications to ensure we stayed true to our goal. Our baseline testing focused on a user feedback survey after trying on the product and using it.

Adaptability

As a baseline metric, we choose to have our product be insertable into a minimum of 3 different shoes. This specification was chosen to maximize product materials and product use. This metric was weighted second highest after the ease of use, strength, and durability.

Strength

In order to maximize the product’s intended use, we believe that we must prioritize the product's strength. Our baseline was to withhold the force of a 300 lbs. football player stomping down on the product.

Durability

Football players endure many impacts during a given season. To account for that in our specifications, we wanted to focus on the durability aspect of the product. Initial user surveys revealed that football players replace their cleats once a season, thus setting our baseline testing as a one-season lifeline for the product.

Cost

We weighed this specification as the lowest because we believed that, given our ideas at the time, all of the products could have been created using low-cost materials. Our baseline for testing was a cap of $20.

Legal

Initially, we believed that our product required ⅛ in of foam around plastic to adhere to NCAA rules; however, after discussing with Dartmouth’s Athletic Trainers, we discovered that this rule does not apply to shoe inserts. As a result, we no longer added foam around the edge of the Toe Guard.

Ethical

Adhering to ethical testing to ensure that we did not injure or harm our test subjects in any way was our top priority. We did not want to test strength or durability with humans to avoid possible human harm; however, to understand the rest of our specifications, we did pursue a simpler user test focusing on comfortability.

Safe

Overall, we did not want to cause any harm to any user; to do so, we wanted to create safe testing procedures for a safe product.

Prototypes

Iterative Process:

Testing and User Feedback

Strength - Instron Testing

2.4776 kN = 557 lbs

2.176 kN = 489 lbs

Comfortability

Scale: 1 Not Comfortable - 5 Very Comfortable Goal: 4.5

To ensure our product is comfortable for our users, we set a 4.5 out of 5 benchmark for the comfortability the product provided while in the cleats. We conducted surveys, asking our users to rate the comfortability of the product while in use. Unfortunately, our product failed to provide adequate comfort for the users, as exemplified by the user feedback graph above. We understand our product's comfortability is below our set benchmark, and will account for this shortcoming in future iterations.

Specification Testing Results Breakdown

Ease of Use

Putting On Product

Scale: 1 Difficult - 5 Extremely Easy Goal: 4.5

To ensure our product is easy and practical to use, we conducted surveys and received user feedback on how difficult it was to insert the product into a cleat. We set a 4.5 out of 5 benchmark for the difficulty of inserting the toe guard Into a cleat. Based on our feedback and results, we successfully satisfied our 4.5 goal.

Removing Product

Scale: 1 Difficult - 5 Extremely Easy Goal: 4.5

On the other hand, removing the product from the cleats proved to be quite difficult. Again, we set a 4.5 out of 5 benchmark for the difficulty of removing the toe guard from the cleat to ensure the ease of use. Based on our feedback and results, we were unable to satisfied our 4.5 ease of use goal.

Ethics and Sustainability

Ethics

To repurpose the current toe guard, the epoxy must either be burned off or chemically dissolved resulting in toxic emissions. Using prepeg carbon fiber could mitigate this ethical issue by providing a cured material which reduces the epoxy emission and minimizes work hazards. Exploring materials beyond carbon fiber could also address this issue.

Sustainability

For future iterations of the toe guard, replacing carbon fiber with s-glass fiber glass, a silicone-based fiberglass, could increase its shelf life providing a more sustainable product. Implementing sustainable packaging such as biodegradable and recycled plastics and cardboard further addresses our product's sustainability.

Business Plan and Economics

Pricing

Variable cost was based on the products were used, along with paying our employees $20 an hour for manufacturing. The total cost breakdown is $10.88 for two toe guards that would be sold as one unit.

Our fixed costs are based off of basic business expenses like rent, utilities, technology like computers and a thermoform machine, along with insurance and money for full time salaries within our company.

Our market size was based on the 1.2 million high school, college and professional football players in the United States. Our product is also marketable towards other sports like rugby and even everyday people. Therefore, we felt as though 300,000 people for our market size is a conservative but realistic number. By surveying the Dartmouth football team and with a cost of $10.88 per unit, we feel as though the prices of $20, $25 and $30 are all within market price (comparing our product to protective equipment like a shin guard). When surveying the Dartmouth football team, majority said that they would be willing to buy the product every year. Meaning that of the 300,000 people that make up the market size, many of them will be repeat customers, buying new toe guards whenever they purchase new cleats.

Design Improvements

Moving forward with our design, we find it essential to take a few steps back and refine the mold we based our toe guard off. Molding the whole shoe will allow us to have a larger and more accurate mold of the cleats which in turn will allow for a more form fitting toe guard and increase comfortability. The strength of our tested prototypes met our goals, so improving upon its comfortability will ensure our toe guard fulfills our baseline expectations.

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