Leveraging AI to celebrate your winning moment.
Project Overview
Events and races around the globe are being enjoyed in person and virtually. Red Bull’s Wings for Life World Run for the last decade has brought over 1.1 million+ participants. To commemorate their 10 year anniversary, our AI services were requested to enhance a runner’s moment when they were ‘caught’ virtually by the catcher car.
Objective
Design a mobile experience for Red Bull’s Wings for Life Race that will allow users to capture the moment they completed their race globally.
Solution
We created the FANtastic Photos experience which allowed users on completion of the race to customize, create, and share their unique souvenir photo using AI technology. We also created a self service portal that could easily launch FANtastic Photos sites for different clients.
Client
Red Bull
Timeline
2022 March - 2022 May
2023 March - 2023 May
Product
web app
My Role
Product Design
Design Consultant
Company
Photo Butler
User Personas
We collaborated with our client on creating user personas for this project. They had a clear understanding on who and why they were building this experience for.
AI Technology
Object Detection
Object detection was used to identify and locate both the runners' bibs and their faces in images or videos. The AI model was trained using a dataset of images that contain labeled examples of bibs. The model learned to recognize the unique visual features and patterns associated with bibs, such as their shape, color, and text. At the end of the race, participants were able to input their bib number and find their race photos.
AI-Powered GPS & Time Tracking
Everyone across the planet starts their race at exactly the same time: 11:00 am UTC. That meansin the UK start at 12:00 pm, in Germany at 1:00 pm, in Florida at 7:00 am and so on... The Predictive Tracking AI helped to calculate when the catcher car ‘catches’ the racer from analyzing the GPS and time data. The AI-powered geolocation also identified where the participants were located during the race.
Background Remover
The AI model was trained on large datasets performing semantic segmentation, which involves labeling each pixel of an image as either foreground or background. The AI could identify the person, usually in the form of a selfie, and mask the background in order to let the participant apply a different creative background provided by the client.
Wireframes
For Red Bull, we focused iterating on a simple mobile SDK experience for the participants to create, save and share their race completion to social media.
How we incorporated AI technology
AI-Powered GPS & Time Tracking
When the participant gets ‘caught’ they are shown their total time, distance, and average pace. The CTA ‘share results’ launches the FANtastic Photos experience.
Background Removal
The participant would be instructed to take a selfie or use a photo from their camera roll. This photo would undergo the background removal process, masking the background from the main foreground object. Once the process was complete, the participant could add a frame and change their background, creating a unique souvenir.
Object Detection
For the record breaking 206,728 participants from around the globe, we used the AI technology of object detection to track the bib numbers and their location. This was useful for the users who searched for their photos online.
Wings for Life - High Res Mocks & Flow
Design Impact
228k sessions launched
66k souvenir photos created
56k saved & shared photos
countries launched the experience
Souvenirs created per participant
Takeways
AI technology can be easily incorporated into any digital experience.
The landing page for FANtastic Photos need to explain the overall experience better.
Fun experience for all and to share on social media.
Post Launch
Productization
We iterated to create a streamline process to consistently launch the experience for different clients and events such as:
Ryder Cup
PGAA
Patriots
Oracle Hospitality
Weddings & Birthdays
more!
Additional Features
Since our initial launch we’ve added the following features to the experience:
Email Capture
Printed Souvenirs
Hotel Check-in
Custom Event Name & Date
more!
Self Service Portal
The high demand for the experience encouraged us to build a self service portal that allows our clients to easily create their own FANtastic Photos website.