Dan Hobson knows footwear design. After obtaining an industrial design degree from Syracuse University, he’s had a 25-year career designing innovative running shoes, workout shoes, and even NASA boots. In 2022, he joined OOFOS as Head of Product Design and soon began work on the company’s newest creation, the OOmy Stride.
OOFOS makes footwear to help athletes recover. With a patented footbed and science-backed OOfoam, the company’s products absorb impact and encourage blood flow, speeding up the recovery process. Though known for its slides and sandals, OOFOS enters new territory with the OOmy Stride, which focuses on movement and active recovery.
I spoke to Hobson about the design process for the OOmyStride and what sets it apart from other athletic footwear. Here’s what he had to say.
(Note: This interview has been edited for clarity.)
The Manual: When you and your team started out, what was the end goal for the OOmy Stride?
Dan Hobson: Yeah, so there were a couple of different things we were trying to achieve. One was trying to get the exact same feel out of the OOmy Stride as the slides and sandals that we have. Our current footwear is really good. But there are some slight differences to try and get that feel ever closer. So that was number one.
So there’s some differences in how the bottom’s constructed compared to our current footwear. So that was number one, was to try and get the feel — like everything feeling exactly the same.
And then two was we wanted to make this our most active recovery shoe. So, like moving a little bit faster, when you move faster, to make longer strides. Your gait’s a little more extended, and your heel impact’s more important, and cushioning the heel and absorbing impact there.
So, you know, thinking about how to improve that experience. You know, taking into account recovery, that type of thing. So how to improve on that. When you look at it, at the end, is this — as I’m going through my gait cycle, as I’m walking faster or striding faster — is this a better experience than the current product?
The Manual: It sounds like it’s more of a movement focus than the slides are.
Dan Hobson: Yeah, I think when you talk about active recovery, like obviously moving, there’s a different mindset. Old recovery was to lock your foot in a boot and freeze it in place. Now, the more modern way of recovery is trying to move around as much as possible and start moving as early as possible.
Get blood flow going, increase your range of motion, in general. In general — I know that’s not the case for everything. But that’s kind of the mindset now. So if you can do that not only from a slide and sandal standpoint, but from a shoe standpoint — you can move around even further — like that’s kind of the goal, how much more can you push active recovery?
The Manual: What sources of inspiration did you all have when you first started out?
Dan Hobson: Our founders have a really strong visual DNA that they started with. So just amplifying that a little bit in terms of trying to bring a little more visual softness to the product. It’s more intuitive — like, you’ll see it’s more rounded, more voluminous around the back of the heel. So a little more intuitive from a look and a feel standpoint.
From an inspiration standpoint, you want it to look good, you want it to feel good. I think I’m always inspired by forms that are simplified and sleek, and kind of a purity of form. Not too — like, not too much stuff going on.
And I think that’s — part of that is from what the founders, Paul Brown and Juan Diaz, have started. They’re very much from a similar mindset. So you want to take that — you don’t want to go too far away from what their vision was, from the brand standpoint, from a DNA standpoint, design-wise. You kind of want to respect what they’ve done.
The Manual: Are there any of your past projects that you drew from while designing these?
Dan Hobson: When I joined OOFOS two years ago, this was one of the first projects I worked on. And so there wasn’t — I had their products to look at and to draw from. But there wasn’t one singular one where I was like, wow, it’s got to look like this, or it’s got to be this way.
You know, my past career — I’ve worked in the industry for 25 years — done so many different projects. I don’t even know if there’s one that I’d say, hey, you know, I was trying to make it look like this, like this.
I mean, it’s definitely in that more modern wedge kind of runner look, even though it’s not a runner. It’s kind of in that world.
The Manual: Can you describe the testing process and how you refined the shoe over time?
Dan Hobson: Yeah, so we have a rigorous development testing team that goes out and does all the testing, aside from myself. We put it through kind of a standard industry testing program. So take it and put it up against — so this one in particular, a testing facility called Heeluxe, and they did some testing for us.
So we put it against some of our own products. Not just competitors but our own. They have a huge database of products that they can pull from and say, hey, here’s how you compare for cushioning, for recovery.
We were most interested in how it did against our own products. It did really well. For a first product that was built differently, I was, I guess, a little surprised how well it did against our own product. Especially against — one of the tests was for the smoothness of the gait.
Like the laydown of it and how it feels in that heel-to-toe transition. And that scored better than most of our — actually all of our — current products. It scored the highest out of that. So calling it the Stride and having it built for this, it’s kind of a nice validation that it did so well compared to everything else we tested it against.
We will test it internally and externally, depending on the product. And it goes through four or five — heel impact absorption, heel-to-toe transition, traction, longevity. It goes through a battery of tests.
And then because we’re building it on the patented footbed shape and the bottom rocker, and our foam, that part, we know that it’s going to be a great recovery product.
The Manual: During the design, the testing, and the refinement, was there a moment of discovery? Like you had a eureka-type thing?
Dan Hobson: Did we have a eureka-type moment? I think we had a eureka — like this works as well as we want it to work. Yeah, there was — the things that we put into it initially seemed to work really well, and it was small refinements after that. That doesn’t usually happen that way. Usually, it’s, oh, OK, we need to rework all this other stuff.
I think we made some good choices at the beginning on how to build this. And it happened to work out really well for us. It wasn’t the typical, hey, we did 30 variations of this, you know, we had to do like 70 variations. Which I’ve been a part of, too. I’ve definitely worked on a lot of those projects. But this one, we got really close, really fast. And I think that’s part skill, part luck.
The Manual: Can you describe particular features of the OOmy Stride that make it unique and different?
Dan Hobson: Number one — the current construction, it’s a two-layer construction. It’s not bad. It’s just a different way to build it. The current is a two-layer. This is a single unit of material. So that’s one difference. So you get a more uniform feel over the whole bottom, where we talk about hey, you know, trying to make it feel more like slides and sandals. That’s one thing.
And then the second is on the current products, you sit more on top of the foam. You’ve got your midsole that you kind of sit on. There’s not a lot of wrap that goes around the sides of your foot. So this, you really sit. Like, you’re 20 millimeters into the foam. Like, you’re sitting there in the foam. So you have it wrapping up around your foot. So it’s surrounding your foot.
And it kind of tapers out as it goes toward the toe. And what that does, it kind of hugs your foot a little bit more in the back. I call it soft support. It’s not like a heel counter. But it’s just a little more supportive. It gives you a little bit more control. You’re a little bit more centered over that platform compared to our other products.
The Manual: Can you expand on some of the material choices you made?
Dan Hobson: Sure, like I said, the bottom, like our foam that we use, the proprietary foam, that’s the same foam that we use in all of our products. I mean, that’s the difference. I think one of the questions that Jen had kind of put in the list was what makes your products better for recovery.
And honestly, most of it is down to the foam itself, which is specifically built for recovery. It’s not like we’re trying to make a running shoe or a training shoe, or something that gives you — because, you know, most foams, like 99% of foams, are built to absorb and then return that energy back to the user at some level.
OOfoam is not designed to return energy. We’re absorbing the energy as much as possible. It returns really slowly. And no one else is doing that, which is why our foam, and why recovery, like why those things mesh so well together. The technology is built specifically for recovery. We’re not just taking an existing foam in a range that does a couple of things pretty well and saying hey, this is a recovery product.
I think that is number one; the material choice in the bottom is what makes it a recovery shoe, along with some of the geometric choices, how the bottom curves, how the footbed is shaped. So I think that, from a bottom standpoint, is super important, what differentiates us and our products from anyone else who says they’re recovery versus being actually a recovery product.
I think if you don’t have a technology that’s built to do this, I don’t know how you can claim your product is built for recovery, but people still do it. From another standpoint, on the Stride specifically, since you’re moving fast, you want to control the heel a little bit more. So a little bit — you’ve got some synthetic around the back of the heel which controls — it’s still soft. From a tactile feel, we want it to be soft, too. So it’s that suedey-type feel on the back.
And then you’ve got a four-way stretch mesh on the front, which is really breathable and lets your toes really flex, lets them spread out. The last is a little bit — it’s definitely wider than a normal last, an industry-standard last, so your toes can move around more.
Our foam is flexible. The upper is flexible, especially in the front. So it’s breathable and your toes can move around. It promotes blood flow, which is great for recovery. And then we have an engineered knit collar and tongue, so you can slip into it really easily. It just gives you enough support to hold it on your foot, and then if you want to tighten it up, obviously, you can tighten the laces if you need more support.
The Manual: I’m going to be testing OOmy Stride. Is there something that I should pay attention to that’s happening? Or that the shoe’s designed to make me feel?
Dan Hobson: Hopefully, it makes you feel better. I mean, honestly, that’s the mission of our company, to make you feel better. I can throw as many numbers, you know, from a testing standpoint — you know, this makes you recover X percent faster, gets your body back to a neutral gait 100% faster. That doesn’t matter if you, yourself, don’t feel better. So I would want you to pay attention to how your feet, ankles, hips, lower back — how that feels compared to maybe not wearing something like this.
