Developer Kelly Whitton gives us some insight to EA SPORTS Active™

23 Mar, 2009

Tags fitness, active

Hi! My name is Kelly Whitton and I'm a member of the EA SPORTS Active development team. I'm thrilled to be able to share some insights with you as a female developer on this product.

I'm a Development Director which means that I project manage the development of EA products. This involves working with the team to translate the vision and designs for our products into plans and roadmaps that allow us to build them. My responsibilities include ensuring our products are completed on time with a high level of quality. It's a challenging job but one I absolutely love! I've been with EA for 3 ½ years and have worked on titles such as Fifa Street 2, Tiger Woods 08 and Need for Speed Pro Street prior to joining the EA SPORTS Active team.

First of all, let me say I am very proud of this product and the impact it will have on people who are looking to make positive changes in their lives. Working on EA SPORTS Active has been an entirely new experience for me, both as a developer and as a female who fits within the target demographic of this product. EA SPORTS Active is a unique and innovative product that is breaking ground for EA SPORTS as a brand...who wouldn't want to be a part of that!

The concept for EA SPORTS Active is one that's been in the making for some time now. We knew from the beginning that we had to set ourselves a part from our competitors in order to be successful in today's crowded fitness marketplace. The concept of the leg strap really started to set us apart. Our first prototypes happened early on and it really allowed us to capture lower body movements and in turn build more intense workouts.

A lot of research was conducted and we brought on fitness experts like Carmen Bott to assist us in creating balanced workouts at various levels of intensity. That's one of the cool things about EA SPORTS Active, you can choose your intensity and personalize your workouts. Carmen, along with the designers created exercises that cover a wide range of muscle groups to get maximum benefits but they also kept it fun with our sports drills like cardio dance and tennis.

We've worked really hard on ensuring we assist people in learning new exercises which for me is always a challenge. We created a trainer that provides real time feedback and can help you improve in doing the exercises correctly and safely. We created great tutorial videos that provide detailed info on form and timing and are really beneficial when you are trying out the exercises for the first time. That's an important one for me because I usually have to be shown more than once how to do an exercise - having access to a video to watch over and over really helps.

The journal was key in making this product not just about fitness but really about overall health and well being. Like anyone else, I've tried to get results by just working out or just watching what I eat and it's so clear that a combination of both is really important. Having a tool to track my nutrition intake and all of the other factors that affect my health is important in helping understand where I may need to focus more attention.

Finding time for fitness and a healthy lifestyle tends to be challenging when work and family schedules get busy and I'm the first to admit to that. What I love about our product is that the 30 Day Challenge is a prescribed program that takes the thinking out of your workout. We also have preset workouts that you can choose from to fit the amount of time you have during the day (not to mention the variety in routines it provides). So when you finally get some personal time at the end of the day, just following our trainer at home makes things that much easier.

It's been so fun to be a part of such an innovative product that offers so much more than just the product experience itself. Using EA SPORTS Active really can be a life changing experience and is a great motivator for people looking to change their habits and make a healthy lifestyle a priority.

Working with people like Carmen has taught me so much about fitness and the importance of a healthy lifestyle. Having had exposure to all of the information around the benefits of a healthy lifestyle has had an impact on the way I view health and has raised the importance of making time for myself in my busy schedule. I'm doing my second ever 10k run in April and if feels great to be Active!