Deconstructing Product Design

THUMP 2 Sunglasses

Oakley, 2006

1. William Congreve wrote, “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast …,” but little did he know that music also hath charms to improve training performance. The designers at Oakley did know it, however, and this fact was the driving rationale behind the THUMP sunglasses. Colin Smith, tech guru at Oakley, comments: “Athletes love to train to music. I believe research indicates that performance increases by about fifteen percent if you train to music. So we started to look at the music players that athletes were wearing. They all had what we called the ‘ball and chain’ problem: a headset attached to a player by a long chord. This is obviously not the ideal situation for an athlete, and it can even be dangerous. ...