Doug Lemov's field notes

Just reading up this morning on adidas’ new Smart Ball, which gives players feedback on their striking of said ball though an iphone app. It tells you speed, spin rate, spin axis, trajectory, contact location, and amount of bend after the ball makes contact with the foot.

On the cool side, it’s, well, cool.  On the real world side it seems like a lot of other smart technology- intruiging, but whether it actually improves performance boils down to all that un-tech-y stuff about how humans use it to have conversations and guide and teach, etc.  In other words, the data is only as useful as the people putting it to use. 

So, let me play the optimistic skeptic.  How would you put this technology tomaximum use to improve skill?  Can someone sell me on a plan for how they’d harvest the potential benefits?

Smart Ball