Summer is here, making it the season of the neighborhood pickup soccer game. The U.K. design firm Uniform has released a pair of connected soccer goal cones that send messages to friends letting them know when it’s game time.
The connected cones and their corresponding app–known as Pali, which means “goalpost” in Italian and “friend” in Scottish–were designed in-house by Uniform as a way to encourage people to put their phones down and go play sports instead.
Currently, you’d need people’s phone numbers to include them in your game. But Pali’s designers at Uniform imagine that the cones could facilitate games with people outside your network as well. What if you could arrive at the beach, set up your goal posts, and have Pali summon a group of people who wanted to kick a ball around with you?
Of course, it’s possible to set up a game with friends whenever you’d like without smart goal cones. But Pali does make it easier to communicate with all your friends about a game without having to get in touch with each separately while giving people more of an excuse to go outside and get active. And once you’re there, the silicon, collapsible yellow cones add a dash of style–and clever design–to the soccer field.