Gabrielle King

With a personal culmination of 17 years of dance and teaching experience, Pointe Sense explores the intersection between creative performance and design through my passion for teaching.

Throughout the process of completing my Industrial design studies, I have explored how design can be integrated into all aspects of my daily life, and it was this curiosity that sparked the idea of Pointe Sense.

As a teacher and designer, my main goal is to ensure the success of my students/users. Placing teachers and students at the forefront of this project, Pointe Sense utilised co-design practices at each stage of the design process. Ultimately, Pointe Sense was designed for dancers BY dancers.

Mark Wilken Industrial Design Highest Achievement Award

The Mark Wilken Design Award celebrates the lasting legacy of Mark Wilken, an influential educator, mentor and designer. A key member of the academic staff from the earliest days of the Industrial Design program at Monash University. Mark’s dedication to nurturing creative talent, combined with his commitment to advancing industrial design, has shaped generations of young designers and set a high standard of excellence. This award recognises a student whose work embodies Mark's spirit of innovation, resilience, and vision in Industrial Design.

What is the Pointe Sense System?

Pointe Sense is a unique three-part system for ballet students and teachers, utilising technology to create a visual teaching aid for dance.

Wearing the specialised sensors via the unique Pointe Sense leg warmer while dancing, the Pointe Sense system creates a 3D visual model of the dancer that can be accessed via the Pointe Sense app, and used by teachers and students as a visual aid to assist in their existing teaching and learning practices

Research

This project has ballet students and teachers at its core. As such, my initial research focused on the needs of the users themselves. Conducting surveys with both ballet students and teachers from a range of different dance schools, I explored areas such as teaching methods commonly used and preferences, existing dance tools and aids, as well as the motivations, goals and fears of ballet students and teachers in class.

The Pointe Sense Leg Warmer

When designing and creating Pointe Sense, a range of different formats were explored. Being a wearable garment, the ideation and creation process was constantly informed through rigorous research, prototyping and user testing with both dancers and non-dancers. Key constraints, such as the fit, materiality, safety and visual aesthetics had to be carefully considered and executed within the final design.

The Pointe Sense Case and Sensors

The Pointe Sense case and sensors had to be both durable and lightweight, ensuring that they are suitable for high intensity movement such as dance. The sensors are placed in colour coordinated pockets in the leg warmer, with the locations specific to the intrinsic and extrinsic muscles that are commonly used when dancing en pointe. These sensors measure the force of muscle extension and flexion to create a 3d model. Additionally, optional toe sensor packs can be used, which connect to custom suede tip sensors that are glued to the tip of the pointe shoe. As pointe shoes have a short lifespan, the Pointe Sense system is designed to work with or without these additional sensors.

The Pointe Sense App

Pointe Sense does not aim to replace dance teachers, it strives to enhance existing teaching and learning practices through the use of emerging technologies. As such, the design and creation of the app had to take this into consideration, requiring collaborative interactions between students and teachers.

Taking into account the safety of students and the ethical implications of data sharing was also a key focus in the design process, prompting a two-way safety feature that requires both teachers and students to manually join/start class sessions before data can be shared.

The Process of Creating Pointe Sense

This video summarises the process of creating pointe sense and the reasoning behind some of its key features.

[View full video here]

Mark Wilken Industrial Design Highest Achievement Award

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