Altering Nike Training Club for South Africa
Practicing localization — redesigning aspects of Nike Training Club for fitness app users in South Africa

This is an exercise on transforming fitness apps to make them culturally competent for a different country. I was interested in altering an app for South Africa, because I had studied abroad there and was interested to learn different aspects of the culture that I had not been exposed to. To do research for this exercise, I looked at what color meant in different countries, what cultural dimension scores South Africa has, and the types of language the app should be in.
A popular exercise app is the Nike Training Club (NTC) app. This app provides a variety of targeted workouts. Workouts are sorted under intensity and levels of experience, and include video tutorials for each exercise. For a price, this app can also be used for nutritional and sleep information, making it a well rounded healthcare app [1]. However, the exercise component is free.
Nike created controversy in South Africa last year when a director’s husband made a racist comment [2]. To compensate for this, they can work to localize their fitness app for South Africa. South Africa’s active fitness app users are projected to increase from 11.8 million users to 13.9 million in the next few years [3]. NTC is not even in the top 50 downloaded apps from the Google Play Store [4]. Through localization, NTC may become the forefront of the fitness apps used in South Africa.
ADAPTION
In order to know what do adapt to make NTC culturally competent for South Africa, I needed to understand if people in South Africa used fitness apps, and what sort of features could be altered in the interface to localize it. After researching fitness apps use in South Africa, I learned usage trends and other statistics. Researching color lead me to determine what visual alterations I could make to the interface, and researching their culture lead me to understand how I could change the titles to make the workouts more applicable and motivating for people to use them.
To adapt NTC to be culturally competent for South Africa, I would redesign the interface to include more colors. Additionally, I would include workout plan titles that suggests quick results. These two factors will appropriately improve the localization of NTC for South Africa, as they take into consideration color in marketing the app, and catering towards cultural dimensions of the country.
COLORFUL PATTERNS
Changing the colors of the interface design will make the app more applicable to South Africa. Using a large variety of colors makes the interface look festive [5]. Additionally, the colors that should be used are the colors of the flag. Figure 1 below shows the RGB colors of the South African flag.
Colors of South African Flag
Flag colors are often used in marketing for different countries [5]. Additionally, the colors in Figure 1 should be used to make NTC feel more upbeat than cooly sophisticated and clean. Currently it is white and black, with some accents of lime green for US users. Figure 2 below shows where I would add patterns.
Background Adaption

Patterns are often used for decoration in South Africa [5]. The backgrounds for the workout options will overlay a geometric background to improve the cultural competency for the visual design of the app. However, the navigation will remain white with black text so that users will easily be able to refer to the navigation without being overwhelmed by the background patterns. Additionally, the background patterns and images for workouts should not clash, or else the added pattern will be disorientating and detract from the experience of people seeking workout plans.
CATERING TOWARDS SHORT TERM ORIENTATION
Due to South Africa’s short term orientation [7], workout titles suggesting quick results would be culturally appropriate. Short turnarounds for results will cater towards the country’s short term orientation, since the culture of their country is to plan for the near future as opposed to further ahead. Figure 3 shows what titles I would change.
Workout Title Changes

There are 11 official languages spoken in South Africa [8]. Another factor that will need to be compensated for are translating the app into the most popular languages in this country, as many people speak more than one language. Ways to facilitate language translation are by having clear and concise text, making it easier for translators, and by designing for text expansion [9]. Another factor in potential language barriers is reduced by how NTC provides videos of people demonstrating the workouts. Therefore, even if every language is not accounted for, having versions of the app which are in the more popular languages in addition to the workout demonstrations will increase the amount of users that will be able to comfortably follow the workout plans.
ROADBLOCKS
Some challenges in my research were learning what the current culture of fitness was in South Africa. A source that really helped me with this was fitness statistics. I also struggled with was learning about what colors meant, because some color culture websites discussed Africa as a whole. Learning from a source that the flag colors of countries are used for marketing helped me solidifying what colors I should use for the interface adaption.
Sources
[1] Nike Training App for iPhone & Android. (n.d.). Retrieved October 29, 2019, from https://www.nike.com/us/en_us/c/nike-plus/training-app.
[2] Barr, S. (2018, August 22). Nike stores in South Africa closed following racism controversy. Retrieved October 29, 2019, from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/nike-south-africa-stores-closed-racist-video-economic-freedom-fighters-a8503016.html.
[3] Fitness — South Africa: Statista Market Forecast. (n.d.). Retrieved October 29, 2019, from https://www.statista.com/outlook/313/112/fitness/south-africa#market-users.
[4] Follow the leaders: highest ranking Apps in Google Play Store, South Africa. (n.d.). Retrieved October 29, 2019, from https://www.similarweb.com/apps/top/google/app-index/za/health-and-fitness/top-free/.
[5] Morton, J. (2004). Global color: clues & taboos. Colorcom.
[6]South Africa Flag Colors Image Format. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://www.schemecolor.com/south-africa-flag-colors.php.
[7] Home. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://www.hofstede-insights.com/.
[8] Languages of South Africa. (2016, January 12). Retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_South_Africa.
[9] Aykin, N. (2004). Usability and internationalization of information technology. CRC Press.
