What Custom Orthotics Can Teach Us About Everyday Footwear Design

The Science- and Data-Backed Principles Behind Orthotic-Inspired Insoles

When one of your customers hears “orthotics”, we’ll bet they immediately conjure an image of specialized, medically-prescribed inserts designed to correct foot imbalances, reduce pain, and provide targeted support. Those interpretations of orthotics aren’t wrong; custom orthotics can help to relieve pain, improve mobility, prevent further injury, and delay or avoid the need for surgery.

However, custom orthotics function as more than a treatment for those with chronic foot issues. 

Orthotics set a great benchmark for the core principles that insole design should follow: support, alignment, and preferred movement. These features that make medical-grade custom orthotics so beneficial should also be applied to insoles to deliver more comfortable footwear for everyone.

In this post, we explain why orthotic-inspired insoles are a best-practice approach to footwear that gives all wearers the support, alignment, and motion control they need – even if they aren’t suffering from chronic foot pain.

Breaking It Down: What Makes Custom Orthotics So Effective

Infusing the science behind custom orthotics into insole design is just smart. By combining biomechanics testing with human factor data, we can build insoles for the way people really move and deliver orthotic-level comfort, performance, and support with the necessary foot alignment and preferred movement to keep feet grounded and reduce discomfort. 

Here’s a deeper look at the three basic principles behind custom orthotics, and how we apply each to our insole designs to help brands deliver an exceptional footwear experience right out of the box.

1. Support: Building a Foundation for Comfort

Foot issues require greater support around areas of the foot like the arch and heel where strain, fatigue, and injury are most likely to occur. Custom orthotics are designed to provide more structured, targeted support to these parts of the foot, which is crucial in preventing additional issues like plantar fasciitis, arch collapse, and heel pain.

The right support should start with science – using biomechanics data from thousands of foot scans and testing insole performance under real-life conditions to ensure they cradle and reinforce the foot where it matters most. 

At INSITE, every insole design is built with structural integrity in mind to deliver reliable support that improves comfort and performance across a wide range of activities and footwear categories.

2. Alignment: Optimizing Body Mechanics

From hitting step goals to hitting the gym, our feet take on a lot every day, and foot issues can quickly lead to other problems in different parts of the body like the knees and hips. Custom orthotics help correct misalignment, guiding the foot to a more neutral, efficient position to prevent related injuries. 

Insoles should help keep the foot in proper alignment to reduce overpronation, encourage a neutral footfall, and support the rest of the body to avoid associated injuries or discomfort. 

At INSITE, our insoles take a page from the custom orthotics alignment playbook because we analyze how the foot moves during different activities and build insoles to support those unique movements. We conduct specific testing that includes:

• Psychometric surveys that capture individual perceptions of comfort
• Wireless insole sensors that measure real-time underfoot pressure during activities
• Computer-controlled testing of the compression, shock absorption, and rebound of a shoe’s cushioning system

Read More: Our Insole Comfort Analysis Tools

3. Motion Control: Balancing Stability and Flexibility

With feet, it’s all about balance. An ideal insole should limit excessive movement but allow enough flexibility to maintain the body’s preferred movement path, and provide comfortable underfoot cushioning while maintaining durability and stability. Custom orthotics strike these balances well to deliver ideal support for individuals struggling with foot issues. 

Insoles built on the science of foot health provide stability, freedom of movement, cushioned comfort, and structure – all in one. 

At INSITE, our data-backed approach to insole design ensures our insoles provide the right balance between comfort and support to handle dynamic movement and enable smooth transitions from activity to activity over the life of the shoe.  

Creating a New Benchmark With Orthotic-Inspired Insoles

Inspired by orthotics, our approach to insole design and development leverages biomechanics and real-world user testing to benchmark key comfort metrics like pressure distribution, fit, and shock absorption. Building insoles based on real user expectations enables footwear brands to make smarter design choices that are backed by objective data.

Your footwear can deliver a custom experience without the custom price tag or complexity; and without requiring your customers to seek out custom insoles to achieve ideal comfort, performance, and support. 

With an INSITE insole in your footwear, you know you’re meeting a higher standard for comfort and functionality and appealing to a wider range of individuals with different foot types and needs.  

The core principles of custom orthotics – support, alignment, and motion control – are infused into every INSITE insole, because comfort is a feeling, but it’s also a science that should be built into every step.