A skateboard that gets harder to ride if you neglect it

An early industrial-design project from school: I hacked a skateboard to make it harder to ride the more you use it, punishing mistakes with challenges. Tested and improved with real skaters.

Client
Universidad de los Andes (academic project)
Services
Product design
Date
2007

The concept

Riskboard was a skateboard hack built from scratch, that punished mistakes. The premises that the board gets harder to use, the more you use it, to make it unpredictable and more fun, it uses behavior-shaping frameworks I later applied to digital products, this time inside a physical object.

The process

Concept sketch. I mapped the riding experience, built a working hardware prototype, and tested it with real riders to see how the mechanism changed the way people rode. Then iterated a few times.

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