The man creating the footwear of tomorrow

Honestly it was surprising how much was retained. Of the original brief, I would say 90% of the goal was accomplished, and that’s not typical. Often you leave quite a bit on the table. In this case, and I think it’s because of some of the tools we had access to in terms of the computational design tools and the rapid prototyping, we were able to achieve a lot more of the goal than we could have in the past.

Oh I absolutely get a buzz out of it. That’s why we do what we do, to have the opportunity to work on these fundamental technologies. That doesn't come around very often. Last time we did a really big foam innovation was Lunarlon back in 2008, so to be a part of one of these big meaty innovations is a huge thrill.

The funny thing is internally we use the term ‘energy loss’. We’re trying to come up with a foam that will lose as little energy as possible so that you as a runner will lose as little energy as possible.

The way that translates to a runner is just in how you feel after a run. Do you feel like you have a bit left after your run? Could you push a bit further?

For us that’s what we’re measuring from a mechanical perspective is how much energy is being lost in the foam.

The mechanical testing showed us that the shoe was off the charts in terms of durability. Typically we would expect foams to maintain 1G of impact and 1G of energy return after 250-300 miles of wearing. 1G is what our historical testing has shown us a common runner would be able to perceive.

What we’re seeing in React is that even after 500 miles of wear we are seeing less than ½ a G in degradation of impact and energy return, which is just phenomenal.

That’s a mechanical measurement but we wanted to validate that with real runner perceptions. So we took shoes that already had 500 miles of wear on them and had our testing team clean them up. We then gave them to some wear testers, who put them on under a table so they couldn’t see the shoes, and after they got back from a 5km loop around campus we asked them to tell us how many miles they thought the shoes had on them.

The closest guess to 500 miles was 20 miles.

The whole design team is so excited about the possibilities that this is unlocking.

The designer who designed React, Matt Pauk (Running Footwear Designer), was so in love with computational design. Matt was the product designer and then we had a seperate computational designer, and those guys work hand in glove to create this midsole design.

The power of computational design is in Matt acknowledging that no way could he have come up with this design by hand, it’s just impossible to get the level of detail, especially three dimensionally.

Access to computational tools is opening up a whole new world for us. It used to take us months to prototype something and wait for it to get turned around, and now we can do the same thing in one hour.

Actually this is not the first time we have used computational design, the first time we did that was for Allyson Felix’s spikes at Rio. But doing it for a whole midsole is what posed a challenge.

This is an incredibly exciting time for us. For a little while people thought the low hanging fruit had been picked in running shoes. But now with innovations like ZoomX and React, we’re realising there’s a lot more possibilities. Computational tools have unlocked this.

We actually didn’t give it much thought. We were completely focused on delivering on that experience for the runner.

The expression we used internally was ‘make sure we deliver on the magic’. Because that’s what got us so excited about react in the early stages. Getting runners reactions in the early stages of the prototype and seeing how excited they were, our priority the whole way through was to keep that magic in the product.

So that was top of mind, and focusing on being able to deliver the magic at scale.

I don’t know about that, but I can say a big part of what drove the colour direction is this idea that opposites react.

When the design team heard about React and these opposite characteristics of soft-and-responsive, lightweight-yet-durable, that resonated with them and they coined this expression ‘opposites react’.

So that’s what drove the colour direction of light and dark, blue and pink.

It’s also important to note that both colourways are available for both genders, after getting feedback that guys always want the women’s colourwarys and vice versa. We’re going to continue that in seasons moving forward as well.

I think it’s awesome. The acceptance into the wider culture comes if you do your job right.

We can’t go and target that because we’re working so far in advance and it’s such a moving target, so we focus on trying to find these authentic performance opportunities and put all of our efforts on delivering on those.

Getting that wider acceptance comes as a consequence afterwards.

It’s funny you mention the Free, because I would have to say that yes, it has the most special place in my heart.

I was always into basketball when I was younger, but anytime I tried to run to build my fitness I would always get injured.

The first time I was ever able to run injury free was when I bought some Nike Free. This was before I joined the company, I read this article about them and I thought it was ridiculous, this pair of shoes that makes you feel like you’re not wearing shoes, and you have to pay money for this? But then I tried it and it felt amazing. I was able to run consistently without getting injured.

That's the thing that really led me to coming to work for Nike. I didn’t believe the shoe could have that much impact and to experience if first hand was pretty mind blowing.

I was lucky enough to get to work on some Free’s as well. I was also lucky enough to work on the Lunarglide which I feel a great attachment to.

You know its funny, we really don’t. It’s a continuous process for us. We started working on the next evolution of this a year ago.

When I used to do Kicksology I would interview athletes and one of the recurring themes was how many of the best athletes had so little introspection. I was surprised to find how little these athletes spent time on their accomplishments.

We’re always focused on what the next opportunity is moving forward.

I can’t give any specifics but I would expect React to be treated in a similar way to how Lunar was rolled out.