Imagine a job that includes standing behind a soccer net when the ball hits it at 150 mph. That job belongs to Susan Sokolowski, a 1999 Ph.D. grad from the Department of Design, whatever it takes to evaluate the athletic products she designs for Nike. 

Sokolowski started at Nike five years ago, as a senior designer for soccer equipment. Working on shin guards, goalkeeper gloves, and bags, she also designed a chrome soccer ball that debuted at the World Cup 2002 in Korea and Japan and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in May 2002. “The ball has a special finish so you can actually play with it,” Sokolowski says. She found it exciting to work with soccer pros Ronaldo, Kasey Keller, and Nakata. She explains that many of the products were in fluorescent colors and chrome—which reflected sunlight away from the players’ bodies— including chrome shoes for Brazilian player Ronaldo that garnered a lot of media attention.

Sokolowski knew she wanted to focus on athletics apparel even as she began work on her doctorate in 1992. Her adviser, CHE associate professor Karen LaBat, had a grant from Minnesota-based Swede-O to develop a woman’s ankle brace, the inspiration for Sokolowski’s dissertation research on footwear fit and function. LaBat, who served on Sokolowski’s dissertation committee with colleagues from both design and kinesiology, also willingly rolled up her sleeves— or more to the point, took off her shoes—as Sokolowski developed a sizing system for women’s feet: “Before Susan started collecting data from her subjects, I was the guinea pig,” she recalls. “My feet were photographed, draped, and casted so Susan could capture 3-D models of feet.”

Wide-ranging work
Sokolowski’s Ph.D. work has paid off at Nike, where she today works as advanced innovation designer for the company’s women’s footwear division. Her promotion to this post a year-and- a-half ago followed a stint as senior designer for Nike TrainingGear, where she earned two patents while designing weight training gloves, belts, and grips; ankle and elbow braces; and boards and mats for improving balance.

Sokolowski won’t claim favorites, but she admits that her most interesting design projects thus far have been a finger sleeve and a hand strengthening device. The finger sleeve, which prevents hyperextension of basketball players’ fingers, was a hit with college players and quickly became a popular fashion accessory among non-athletes. Although it’s been banned by the NCAA out of concern that it aids performance, it remains among Nike’s top sellers in basketball equipment.

Product development usually moves slowly, she says—“but I developed the idea for the finger sleeve in just 10 minutes as a quick favor to a coworker.” Inspiration struck almost as quickly when Sokolowski was asked to design a device to build hand strength for lifting weights. She developed a distinctive handgrip gel block that fit many hand sizes and came in easy, medium, and hard resistance levels. “The shape just worked,” she says. 

Sokolowski now works on performance products for women’s running, crosstraining, and walking. Although she can’t provide details of current products under development at Nike, she focuses generally on improving footwear cushioning, fit, and support for specific functions such as stability for lateral movements.

Sokolowski does share a few secrets about her sources of inspiration as a product innovator. Working directly with elite athletes in design and testing is very helpful, she says. Participating in athletic activities herself is also useful.

"Whenever I have a new project, I always try the activity if I can," she says, observing that experience can shed new light on product development objectives such as enhancing performance.

In Sokolowski’s view, what’s most satisfying about her job is that she’s using everything she studied in CHE. In March, she turned the tables on LaBat, her Ph.D. adviser, inviting her to spend three days at Nike headquarters gaining an insider’s knowledge of footwear development.

"This job couldn’t be a better match. It’s the only job of its kind at Nike—and I have it," she marvels. Still, she does hope one day to try a different sort of "dream job": "I would absolutely love to be an apprentice with a shoe maker in Italy. It would be fantastic to learn how to make shoes the old-fashioned way—it’s a dying art," she says.