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When reading a review for a ski or the description on a manufacturers website, words like ‘poppy’ or ‘playful’ often come up. The opposite of ‘playful’ might be ‘dead’ which has negative connotations. But a ski that feels dead might have been intentionally designed that way to keep it smooth through chatter and crud. These descriptors are so subjective to the each rider. Other characteristics like the dimensions, turning radius, effective edge are all quantitative and unambiguous. If you were given the task of describing every detail of a ski in a quantitative manner how would you do it? How would you measure stiffness or dampness for example in a standardized way that quantitatively captures exactly how the ski feels. Would you rate dampness on a scale or would you be more scientific and use damping coefficients? What other characteristics or measurements would you include?
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Your dog just ate an avocado! -
When a "reviewer" says a ski feels dead, you really don't have a clue as to is weight and style.
This is where tribal knowledge combined with a few trusted reviewers is all we need. Otherwise, we're looking at the equivalent of those websites that start off with "The 10 best xxx", along with sponsored links directing you to a vendor.
Many numbers are deceptive, and turn radius (in the context of modern ski design) one of those.
The main column we'd need is color. This would be a numeric "redness" scale, with red getting a "10" because we all know it's the best ;-)
[edit]@mall walker's comments (below) nail it. We have no meaningful way of conveying ski quality/application with an objective numbering scheme, and numbers mislead, with an impression of "false precision".[/edit]
... ThomGalibier Designcrafting technology in service of musicComment
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So much is context-dependent, especially with respect to the height/weight of the skier. If you're 6'5" 240lbs, a ski that feels like a noodle might be a fucking I-beam to me at 5'10" 145lbs. Not to mention ability, style, where you ski, and so on... I'd rather just get the background info from the reviewer and use that to color my understanding of their review, rather than obfuscate the relevant information by disguising it as objective.
Now if you had some way to measure the dampness or whatever (a materials science sort of way) that is another story.Comment
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The only reviews I find useful are when I know that person likes other skis similar to my tastes. More often than not, I've noticed they're usually in the same ballpark in terms of height and weight.
Also: stiffness is too vague and I like how Blister has really emphasized stiffness / flex in various parts of a ski, not to mention lateral stiffness being an important factor.
Ski design is as much art as science so reviews are never going to be perfected in any real way. That reminds me of the Soul7 - I remember trying it and thinking, I fucking hate this ski but it's a really good ski for a lot of people.Comment
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That's what's great about tech talk / skiing with mags (or people who ski a shitload), is that you eventually understand what someone's preferences are, and this makes their reviews much more translatable into your own terms. Despite not having met / skied together, I would interpret a review of a ski as "lightweight and softish flexing" from Thom differently than I would from Norseman, for example. The best is people I've skied with, who are similar size to me, and also like similar skis... like if snowaddict91 or Boissal says "you'd like this ski" there's like a 95%+ chance I will like it.Comment
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I've written hundreds of ski reviews and descriptions, and have yet to use the term "dead." In retail and marketing in particular, the preferred terminology is something like, "smooth and damp at speed" or "quiet and confident on hard snow and chattery terrain" or something to that effect. "Poppy" tends to refer to rebound after compression, but obviously depends in large part on skier weight and style. "Playful" tends to refer to an ability to skid the tails if needed, but can also mean "zero edge hold."
Words, even in the hands of skilled writers who also ski well, are funny. I suggest a demo if you are in doubt.Comment
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Well played, sir. Usually the cardinal rule in copywriting for marketing or online retail is ALL the skis are good, or at least have some redeeming feature, since your employer already bought them and needs to sell them, or you've already delivered them and your dealers need to sell them. Descriptions like "dead," "gutless," and "unsafe at any speed" are usually stripped out and replaced with something more benign by a manager or editor. My attempts at humor in referring to things like "the burly 130 flex has the same level of support as one of Stormy Daniels' bras" have usually not seen the light of the Internet.Comment
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Mine didn’t make the internet. Print, “back in the day.” :PComment
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That’s exactly what I’m trying to get at. The whole point of this thread was to start a discussion about how that could be accomplished, how to scientifically measure these things. There’s got to be a materials scientist on here that could chime in?Comment
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fuckin engineersComment
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