NuStep (www.nustep.com), a company dedicated to producing exercise equipment with a special focus on that for physical therapy, cardiac rehabilitation, and other important uses, learned two critical facts about its customers when developing a new version of its recumbent, low-impact cross-trainer.

For one, increasing numbers of current users of its cross-trainer, as well as potential users, were extremely frail.  So the next-generation model, the company determined, would have to be a rehabilitation trainer that not only could operate at near zero resistance, just 5 watts, or a third of the resistance of the existing model, the T4.  The other thing they discovered was the size of the people who wanted to use the machine, like the population at large, was growing considerably.  And while heavier people could power the machine, it was not designed to support the weight anyone weighing more than 400 lb.  

It’s worth noting that NuStep would not have known how imperative either of those factors were had they not done direct customer research on things like likes/dislikes and actual use, to say nothing of the physiological characteristics of the users.  It was a process that lasted the better part of a year, and it transformed the Ann Arbor, MI-based company and its product development point of view.

Mark Hildebrandt, vp Research and Development, says NuStep has always focused ergonomics, which is not surprising, considering its customers range from people recovering from strokes, orthopedic injuries, cardiac maladies, obesity, and Parkinson’s Disease to name a few.  The low-impact cross trainers that use the arms and legs aren’t just to help people get in shape, but are designed for those with serious neurological ailments or injuries so that they can regain motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

Explaining why they did the extensive research prior to developing what was to become the T5, Hildebrant says, “We pride ourselves on making a product fit the user, and not to fit the user to the product.  Obviously, it’s hard to find a design that fits everyone.  But we wanted it to work for as many people as practical, and you can’t find out what people need with an in-house workshop. You have go where they are and see how they use the machine.”

NuStep engineers closely followed a process laid out in the book Voices Into Choices by Christina H. Brodie and Gary Burchill, a step-by-step guide to bringing customer preferences more directly into product development.  Instead of building statistical or demographic models or sending off user surveys to feed the redesign, members of the NuStep design team fanned out, visiting 48 cardiac rehabilitation centers, YMCAs, clinics and private homes.  They sat down with end-users and physical therapists – basically anyone interacting with the machine on a regular basis – and asked them open-ended questions about their preferences.  The hours of discussions were recorded, transcribed and printed out in reams, which designers and project managers cut up and posted on the walls of a room.

Out of the seeming hodgepodge of more than 800 nuggets of information, clear themes began to emerge.  They pulled out 35 concise quotes, covering everything from suggestions on tweaking the interface console to the changing arm rotational range to adding a 360° swivel seat for more convenient egress and ingress for people in wheelchairs or using walkers/crutches.

The NuStep team went back to the same set of users with a set of 35 potential requirements and asked them to pick five and rank their importance by assigning up the five a total of 100 points, allocated any way they saw fit.  “They could put 100 points on one topic if they wanted to,” Hildebrandt says. “As a result, we were able to create a great grid of requirements showing priority and importance. We understood what the goal up front was and we were pretty clear on what we needed to do from there.”

Armed with the matrix, Hildebrandt amassed an internal multidisciplinary development team.  They approached nearby ergonomics and engineering company Humantech (www.humantech.com) and Michigan industrial design firm Sundberg Ferar (www.sundbergferar.com) asked, “‘How much of this can we get into the T5?’”  It turns out most of what rose to the top of customer interviews made it into the final product, which includes some 40 new features and design modifications.  So did other options, such as built-in heart rate monitoring, a gentler stepping motion, a color display and data tracking and export via USB, which allows medical staff to monitor a particular user’s progress over time, instead of using pen, paper and clipboard to do so.  The process also helped NuStep determine it in fact needed two trim levels for the T5, the base that supports 500 lbs and the T5XR with more features and a 600-lb. weight capacity.

In all, the product development cycle, complete with one year of beta testing at the same clinics and homes where people were interviewed, lasted about four years leading up to the start of production.  That’s about typical for NuStep.  But given the user focus and the number of new features added during this project, it was breakneck speed.  Also accelerating time to market was product design using SolidWorks 3D CAD, and employing an outside firm for finite element analysis of the steel frame designs to ensure the machines could handle additional weight requirements.  “If we didn’t add 3D CAD and some of the other technologies this time, we would still be developing today,” Hildebrandt says.