Case Study: Nike Check App
An innovative mobile app that curates the user’s Nike in-store shopping experience.
Introduction
This is the fourth project assigned by my UXDI course program, where my team members and I had the freedom to decide on a topic and organization. This was known as the ‘passion project’.
As a team, we decided to focus on Fashion and Technology. After individually brainstorming and researching current events in the retail landscape — we determined that there was a great opportunity within the athletic wear industry.
(An example of a resource we found to showcase this opportunity.)
In further researching the athletic wear industry, we collectively chose to analyze Nike, Inc. — as they are one of the most reputable and largest athletic wear companies in the industry and world.
Nike Misson
“Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. *If you have a body, you are an athlete.”
With Nike’s mission in mind, our team was very inspired to develop an innovative app that would help encourage more users to feel like they’re part of the Nike fitness community.
Problem
New athletes who are looking to live a more active lifestyle, need assistance in choosing the appropriate attire to match their exercise needs.
Opportunity
Nike is one of the largest brands in the industry and the world. With an overwhelming amount of merchandise, there is an opportunity to help curate proper attire, accessories and gear to specific target audience members.
*If you have a body, you’re an athlete
Our Objective
Build deep, personal connections with consumers. In order to do so, we strive to deliver an integrated marketplace with compelling retail experiences.
We wanted to design a mobile app that will assist in enhancing a user’s in-store experience. The Nike “Check” App.
Potential Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
- Increase in-store revenue generation versus e-commerce business
- Encourage consumer buy-in to Nike fitness community
- Foster brand loyalty
Our Approach
Preliminary Research
In my team, I acted as the project manager — as well as the researcher and visual designer. I worked with two other members for this project who were responsible for research, visual, and interface design.
My team and I began our initial research by downloading various athletic wear company apps on our phones. We analyzed a number of Nike’s competitors and other comparative brands to understand what features are currently available and what we could implement to create opportunity.
We learned that many large athletic wear companies did not offer an e-commerce app, but apps that help promote and encourage healthier lifestyles and workouts. Comparative brands that were analyzed offered very interesting features that we wanted to consider for our app. We chose these particular brands due to their strong competitive features that they offered in their applications.
Our team was very intrigued by Lookbook’s feature of offering numbered annotations to each article of clothing that was worn by the model. The annotations provided direct links for users to discover where to purchase the same/similar item. We felt that this could be very beneficial to incorporate into our app to promote other Nike merchandise.
Lululemon’s website dedicates a section that highlights an athlete and their story to help inspire users and to resonate with a ‘real’ individual.
This feature was very opportunistic for our app as Nike currently has many collaborations with reputable athletes. We wanted to implement this idea to create a connection between our users and their favorite athletes.
Another great feature that we were inspired by was Lululemon’s barcode scanner that can be used in-store to help consumers learn more about products.
With so much merchandise that Nike releases, we were adament about creating an efficient way to provide product information to help our users with their purchase decisions.
User Flows
We narrowed down our focus on brands Lululemon, Rent the Runway, and Lookbook in terms of creating the most efficient user flow for our Nike app. We analyzed each companies’ account registration process, product discovery, and checking reviews and item availability.
Each flow utilized minimal page clicks to get to destinations (except for Rent the Runway when creating a user account).
Our team implemented Abby Covert’s Heuristic Evaluation to analyze the efficiency/inefficiency of each company’s user flow and information architecture. We utilized this evaluation to focus on areas we could improve for our Nike Check App.
Contextual Inquiry
Our team made two trips to Nike’s flagship store (Niketown) on 57th Street and the store in the Flatiron District. We chose to visit these stores to observe the user’s in-store experience and to speak with sales associates for their insights.
Takeaways from visit:
- Nike provides an immersive store experience in a high-tech, futuristic environment.
- Sales associates were very knowledgable, friendly, enthusiastic, and proactive in helping customers throughout the store.
- Niketown flagship store is currently testing an in-store app.
The in-store app is currently being tested on one floor at a time and is projected on a big touch-screen. Only sales associates have access to this app and is not available in any other store at the moment. This app influenced the initial layout idea for our Nike Check app, as we did not have a design foundation to begin with. Testing this in-store app gave us a better visual and direction for what we wanted to design.
Screening Survey
After compiling some research on our competitors and comparative brands, we conducted a screening survey to continue learning more about who our potential users may be. Being mindful of our problem(new athletes who need assistance in selecting appropriate attire for their exercise needs), we wanted to find users who would benefit most from our app. We received a total of 45 survey responses.
Takeaways:
User Interviews
After reviewing our survey responses, we were able to narrow down to 15 participants to interview. Our interviewees all varied in athletic wear knowledge (low, medium, high). These quotes were most memorable from our interviews because of the pain-points or pleasures they highlighted in their shopping experience.
Interview Takeaways:
- Users interviewed expressed that although they perform research on products online, they still travel to brick-and-mortar stores in order to determine quality, feel and functionality.
- User’s in-store experience may be frustrating due to store congestion and lack of assistance.
Affinity Mapping Method
After conducting our interviews, we individually wrote out key words and ideas we found from each user on post-it notes. As a team, we laid out our ideas and created an affinity map to spot out trends and synthesize our findings. We chose to implement the Affinity Mapping method to organize and consolidate the vast amount of findings we gathered after our interviews. In using this method, we were able to gain a better understanding of what ideas were prioritized and what was trending across different users.
Trends found:
- Users varied in athletic knowledge but most seemed to fall in the medium range.
- Users were time motivated and wanted to get out of the store quickly.
- Trying the items on in-store was their main motivation for not shopping online.
- Many users felt more knowledgeable than sales associates, but would seek help for specific items.
- Many users would Google item information in-store.
- More than half of our users were not interested in sharing their purchases on social media.
Personas
Our findings provided more insight and understanding for us to create our potential users for our Nike Check app. We created a primary, secondary, and tertiary persona to focus on behaviors, needs, pleasures, pain-points, and goals of our potential users and to help with future processes.
All three personas are potential users of our Nike Check App. However, our main focus for our app is our primary persona, Iman Williams. She would benefit the most from our app as she is a young professional that is up to date with the latest news/trends in fashion, lives an active lifestyle, takes her time shopping in-store, and values understanding product information (benefits, features, fit, function, feel, etc.).
Feature Ideation
MoSCoW Method
While keeping our goal in mind of assisting new athletes in selecting appropriate attire for their exercise needs — our team implemented the MoSCoW Method to organize our findings even further into features that we must, should, could, and won’t use. This process helped to prioritize features that were most practical and beneficial.
Features to implement:
- Nike outfit planner with relatable models
- Dressing room reservation
- Wishlist or Favorites
- Current inventory status (online & in-store)
- Athlete recommendations
- Easy and unobtrusive way to get help from a salesperson
Reasoning for features:
- Users are brand loyal, highly influenced by visuals and want to see clothing on real bodies
- Users are frustrated by long-lines and need to try on item in-store
- A way to save their favorite items for later was important in our interviews
- Most websites are not up to date and this inconvenienced our users
- Athletes were considered huge influencers
- Most interviewees did not like speaking to a salesperson unless it was absolutely necessary
Overall, users were trying to find some way that could make their shopping experience more seamless, time-efficient, and less frustrating.
Design Studio
My team conducted a design studio session where we developed a variety of great ideas by initially time-boxing and rapidly sketching out potential wireframes.
We actually found that the time-boxing method was not that efficient for our team, so we decided to collaboratively sketch together and have an open conversation about all possible ideas. As a team, we were able to extract potential ideas from each other with prioritized features in mind to help new athletes choose their attire.
After many sketches and iterations, we were able to produce our first low fidelity wireframes and user flow of our app.
As a team, we decided that we wanted our app to enhance the user’s in-store experience. By doing so, we wanted to implement a scanner feature that users can simply turn on to scan Nike product barcodes while they shopped in-store. After they’ve scanned an item, product information is provided for their knowledge without having to seek a sales associate for help. To encourage our users to discover more Nike merchandise, we’ve created a visual style guide on each product page to motivate their purchase decisions. Lastly, the user is given a choice to reserve a fitting room to try-on the products they’ve scanned and an optional choice of having a personal store assistant to help.
App Map
This is a visual of our final app map that we developed after further design iterations and testings were done since our first stage of initial sketches.
User Testing
After finalizing the initial wireframe sketches and app map, my team and I created our first low-medium fidelity prototype and tested 4 individuals.
The first prototype proved that there were many iterations to be made and various ideas to consider eliminating and improving upon.
Design Iterations Part 1: Lo-Med Fidelity Wireframes
Our second prototype which was done in high fidelity was tested on 6 participants. This time, there were not as many iteration suggestions — but still a considerable amount of areas to improve and change for more clarity and smoother user flow.
Design Iterations Part 2: High Fidelity Wireframes
Nike Check App User Flow
With our personas in mind, we wanted to create the most efficient and seamless user flow for them to navigate through our app. We were inspired by our competitor’s user flows and adapted the concept of utilizing less clicks as possible to get to different pages. We also wanted to make each page accessible from where ever the user was in the flow to go back and forth easily.
Nike Check App Prototype
After creating our prototype and conducting several user tests, my team and I were able to conclude with our project’s next step actions.
Next Steps
- More user testing with new iterations in high fidelity prototype
- Implement “client” feedback
- Start developing version for Android application
- Continue testing the “Styled By Nike” button to ensure users are not confusing it with an advertisement
- Conduct more user interviews to learn and evaluate other areas of opportunities