The aims content evaluation (ACE) model of video-based feedback design: A systematic review and critical interpretive synthesis

Video-based feedback (VBF) has become a central component to performance sport, offering coaches, analysts and athletes opportunities to analyse, reflect, and prepare for performance. Despite technological advances and significant investments made to implement VBF, there is little research to explain how it is intentionally designed or evaluated. A systematic literature review and a critical interpretive synthesis approach was conducted to identify the key principles of VBF and develop a model for applied practice. Thirty-nine studies across multiple sports were included and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three overarching principles were identified: Aims, Content, and Evaluation. Together they form the ACE Model, which describes the choice points around aims, concurrent design decisions, and evaluation processes for VBF practice. This study positions VBF as an interdisciplinary practice and contributes a model to guide the design of VBF strategies and interventions. The ACE Model provides a practical, theory-informed scaffold for purposeful VBF design and evaluation in elite sport.