Retail Space—GoPro

Environments Design III: A comprehensive design of a new pop-up environment for the GoPro brand.

Part 1 — Research & Creative Brief

During Part 1, I worked with Anna Gusman to gather appropriate research and context regarding our client, GoPro. Our research was broken up into 5 sections: Background, Audience, Brand Essence, New Context, and Project Objectives.

Background—

This section primarily focused on understanding GoPro’s current products, market influence and competition. We discerned that GoPro’s market influence spans across several categories, and found that there were many competitors in each of those areas.

Products and market competition

Audience—

In order to design for GoPro, we needed to identify the target audience that GoPro was trying to reach. Qualitatively, we noticed that much of their social media output was targeted towards adventurous youth and young adults, and speaks much less to those outside of that group. However, our quantitative research led us to believe that it was also highly targeted towards parents to buy these products for their children.

Brand Essence—

We primarily researched the brand essence from GoPro’s outward image and language on social media. They have a large presence on various platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, and Twitter. This allowed us to discern that GoPro was promoting a high-energy adventurous lifestyle. This lifestyle is very clear, but we noticed that it seemed to be at a scale that often seems unapproachable to some people. It seemed as though you needed to be a certain type of person to deserve the product.

Some of the GoPro imagery.

Project Objectives—

During this section, Anna and I outlined exactly were our insights and the goals we wanted to accomplish with this space we would end up designing. We determined several key insights in order to guide us moving forward:

Full Deck—

Part 2—Retail Design

In this part of the project, I worked alone to conceptualize and design a full retail experience for GoPro, in the context of a traveling pop-up shop. This would be a project considering the entire customer journey and a test to see how we can weave the brand language and past research to inform our design process.

Site Selection—

I chose Schenley Plaza for my spot. Since GoPro’s primary audience are within the college student umbrella, Schenley Plaza would be good, as it would have traffic from both Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh.

Form Studies—

Our initial progress took the form of creating forms in a way that we could understand space at a greater capacity. We used the 1/2" : 1' scale.

Sketches for the 3D Forms.

Environment Development—

The gradual development of the form caused me to ask a lot of questions. I tried to consistently think about the customer side of things, and have more of an intentional process than a “why not” approach.

When considering the GoPro brand and what would be a meaningful experience that I want the customers to have, I considered my own experiences with the product. I have had a GoPro for around 4 years now, and I love the usability of the product. However, a large flaw with GoPro is that the usability of its products is not portrayed before buying it. I believe a retail/ physical space could bring this tangibility, and should.

Because of this realization, I wanted the primary element of my space to be using the product itself, and secondary would be to learn about the company and its products. I thought it would be interesting to have a space designed for a fun, filmable experience, such as a slide or a trampoline.

My first iteration for the space.

I initially had a user journey in which someone would enter the store, participate and film an activity, edit it, and leave. However, I had a hard time combining product placement and the activity to a well flowing environment.

I realized that the exterior-interior relationship was quite dysfunctional, as I didn’t want people to be coming in and out of a space for a single interaction; it should be either fully inside or fully outside. I went for fully outside first:

Form 2 Ideas.

For my forms, I’ve tried to focus on what the key interaction might look like. I’ve established a style where there exists a key adventure, and the space surrounding it is using it to understand GoPro better. By focusing on the GoPro filming interaction, the brand can be known at a greater capacity.

Plastic Balls inside Chamber

I drew inspiration from a ball pit, and decided a large scale ball pit was a good interaction for people to be drawn towards and want to play at.

Floor plan for the 3rd Iteration.

I started to realize that this form affords visibility from only one side—Forbes. Since Schenley Plaza itself is a large resting spot, I realized that having a wall on the back side would be an alienating design decision, no matter what I put on that wall. If this fun interaction could be seen from both sides, I would be attracting twice the people. This lead me to my next model.

Floor Plan for Iteration 3

This had too little space for the onboarding and exiting areas, and thus I expanded the space to have more room for content.

Final Floor Plan (Iteration 4)

Graphics Development—

Since I spent most of my time deciding on the form and interactions, I did not have much time to flesh out the branding and graphical elements. However, I did want to have the graphics represent the step-by-step process of filming with a GoPro. At first, I had broken down the process into four steps:

However, looking at GoPro’s branding and existing language, I found that this graphic was too bland, and the text too boring.

I eventually revised the language to say “Set. Shoot. Share. It’s that easy.”

Inside, there will be several walls and a screen. The onboarding process has a wall portraying the premise of the space:

I also envisioned the onboarding area to also have a screen on the back wall, showcasing videos that match more with the idea of “everyday adventures.” This would include family videos and video blog content.