Nike Turns London Into a Game Board to Get People Running

Nike has turned the city of London into a game board for a two-week competition called the GRID. The company has broken the city down into its 48 postal codes. Each postal code has four traditional phone boxes. Players compete by doing runs, which they start by going to one of the phone boxes, dialing a specific number, entering their unique identifier, and then following the instructions they're given, which send them to other phone boxes in the city.

What’s particularly cool about the competition is the GRID website, where Nike not only tallies scores but is also serving up visualizations of the race. Since it’s collecting data all the time--every time a competitor makes a call from one of the phone boxes, it logs who they are, where the box is, and what time it is--Nike is turning that information into visualizations that illustrate various aspects of the race. In one of those visualizations (embedded below), the GRID pits men against women, plotting the competitors' individual runs over time on a stylized map of London (in pink for women and blue for men), while tallying up their points on a scoreboard on the side. And, in the good-natured competitive spirit of the game, the video declares at the end: "Boys lead!" and urges their counterparts: "Get running girls!"