Adidas

Adidas x BrainStation

The 4D’s - Data, Design, Development and Digital Marketing

In partnership with Adidas, BrainStation presented a 24 hour hackathon challenge where we had to work in teams consisting of members from each discipline at BrainStation.

Working in collaboration, we were tasked to present a strategy and solution to a team from Adidas Canada’s head office.

We were named winners of the BrainStation 4D hackathon.

Timeline
24 Hours

Role
UX Designer

Team
2x Data Scientists
3x UX Designers
2x Web Developers
1x Digital Marketer

Client
Adidas

Tools
Figma, Adobe Photoshop, InVision

How it started.

The design department utilized the 5 Stages of Design Thinking to guide our process. We also kept an open line of communication for collaboration with all other departments (data, web dev and digital marketing) to assure the entire team stayed on the same page throughout the 24 hours.

Some constraints.

Time
Short timeline limits opportunity to conduct primary research.

Team
New team members from different disciplines. Unknown capabilities.

Health & Safety
Covid-19 restrictions and social distancing rules.

Empathize & Define

2020, a problem space.

With the rapid global shift to online shopping, what digital solutions can we use to support the future success of eCommerce in the apparel/sporting goods industry?

Additional perspectives.

Adidas also provided a couple themes to consider as we began our 24 hour sprint.

Sustainability

Apparel Sales

Our plan.

Considering the two themes Adidas included in their brief, we chose to concentrate more on apparel sales due to Adidas having already launched a sustainability initiative. Now with our problem space established we created a question to act as a guiding light throughout our design process.

How might we increase digital apparel sales by utilizing current and future digital trends so that our brand can become a pioneer in digital retail technology in the Covid-19 era?

Blue sky thinking.

Our design and digital marketing teams began to brainstorm ideas as we waited on our data team to organize the data provided by our client (over 6 million data points!).

We considered 6 themes we extracted from the project brief.

Sustainability
Discovery
Digital Retail Experience
Health and Safety
Accessibility
Business

We then began identifying ideas and innovations that applied to multiple themes.

Enter; the Data Team.

As the sun set, we began conducting secondary research and our data team abandoned their silo and joined our Google Meets office space with their data graphics.

The last 4 years sees the worldwide number of brick and mortar retail locations decrease, and with Covid-19 on the rise we’d expect 2020 to follow that trend. The significance of a user-centered digital retail space will be more important than ever.

“Adidas’ target market falls within the 20- to a 29-year-old age group who are athletes or are passionate about sports and this segment is considered as the strongest consumer market.”
heartofcodes.com

What we learned.

Being patient may not always bring fruitful results. The initial contribution from the data team carried no applicable data towards our problem space, so lesson learned. I then began guiding the conversation and asked for specific parameters for the data they were digesting, and got what was shown above.

A reminder to not work in a silo and that our role as designers should have our finger prints on the project from start to finish.

More applicable learnings.

Insights

Shoe sales are good, but apparel could use a boost.

Online cart activity for Adidas peaks around 5pm

Brick & mortar stores are reducing in the past 4 years.

Online shoppers stick to one category of products.

Themes

Apparel is harder to predict fit, compared to shoes.

Out of sight, out of mind (other product categories).

Reduced need for physical stores due to pandemic.

Opportunities

Provide an in-store experience on the digital platform.

Provide visibility of other product categories.

Increase the transparency of sustainability actions.

The highlighted above indicates what we decided to concentrate on. The other findings from our research will be considered for secondary functions if we find them applicable.

A refined problem space.

With the global pandemic affecting consumer behaviours, online shopping has become the forefront for retailers. This provides a challenge for Adidas to provide our customers with a similar in-store experience on a digital platform.

Proto-persona.

Drawing from all our secondary research, we created a persona to represent our target user. This persona can be used to keep all team members on the same page and understand what our user’s goals, motivations and pain points are.

Ideate & Prototype

Our solution.

The Adidas Virtual Store

Utilizing VR and AR we can bring the exceptional in-store experience, and a virtual change room, to the comfort and safety of our user’s homes.

VUI Staff Member

Provide assistance with a VUI store representative just like if the user was in a physical store.

In Virtual Store Sales

Have in-store promotions to promote multiple category shopping and off peak hour cart activity.

Increased Transparency

Increase transparency of initiatives and sourcing of sustainability efforts of products while shopping.

24 hour delivery plan.

A mobile prototype using Figma

A responsive marketing webpage

Start with inspiration.

We began compiling inspiration specifically for potential functionality. Aesthetic and layout would be dictated by pre-existing branding from Adidas.

VR/AR Inspiration

Sustainability Inspiration

Ink and paper.

We put emphasis on the marketing webpage in an effort to utilize the skillsets of our web development team. We began with sketching with pen and paper to enhance our communication with the rest of our team.

Highway to Hi-Fi

Due to our time constraint our design team began to iterate hi-fidelity wireframes within Figma. The sooner we could get workable wireframes in place, the more time we could provide for our web developers.

Desktop Web v1

Desktop Web v2

Tablet Web v1

Tablet Web v2

Mobile Web v1

Mobile Web v2

Handoff.

We utilized Figma’s Inspect feature to create a seamless handoff to our web dev team. We also remained on the team call with everyone to keep an open line of communication between all departments. We then began brainstorming strategies and talking points for our pitch and presentation to the Adidas team.

Mock it up.

How better to see our products in context than to create some mockups!

Here we have our first iteration of a prototype for the prospective mobile application.

Future Thinking

What’s next?

Iterate, test, improve and repeat.

Identify KPI’s for stakeholders.

24 hours later.

Looking back at those 24 hours, I’ve learned an incredible amount. Here are a few of the takeaways I got from this experience.

No to waterfalls, yes to agile.
A reminder to avoid working in a silo at any stage of a project. Even if it’s the data team working on millions of points of data, it’s important to keep communication open so we can understand and assist on what they’re working on.
Know your personnel.
When working with a new team, it’s important to communicate and understand the team’s capabilities and limitations. With such a tight timeline, these constraints can help dictate what is possible and feasible. Also, the goal is to make sure everyone is comfortable communicating, thus promoting more collaboration.
Projects need management.
With no clear leader (our PM was a pseudo-title for our TA who acted more as a support role), I noticed a need for someone to guide our conversations and manage our tasks. I took on that role and maintained communication between all the disciplines.
Design starts from the beginning and it doesn’t end.
It was easy to see how designers can and should be a part of each process throughout a project. From start to finish, we have a role to ensure that the project stays on track and that each decision made is measurable and deliberate.