New Balance, is one of the world's major sports footwear and apparel manufacturers.
Collaboration (New Balance/Paul Smith)
To mark the 30th anniversary of a New Balance fan favorite, Paul has designed a brace of limited edition 576 trainers - a black version for men and white for women.
Project Brief
New Balance has created many limited and collaboration edition trainers for both men and women. Many people has seen this brand trainers as one of the fashion statement. Goal of the project was to develop a special interactive campaign based on this fact to create more growth and sales for the New Balance.
Tools Used
Photoshop,
Figma
&
InVision
Type & Timeline
Product Design, UI/UX,
Visual Design
3 weeks
Idea
To generate sales and growth, our idea is to create interactions with customers by putting an electronic billboard in the selected countries with fun activities. We will put several special NewBalance edition and collaboration shoes on the billboard with some promotions on it. Users will download the app leveraging the promotion from the billboards. App will help us capture the interaction with us. It will also showcase the special trainer which will help both NewBalance lover’s eyes, and potential customers. QR code on our billboard connects to the NewBalance app that we have created. It allows customers to do the fun activities, shops on the app, connect to our Instagram to browse fashion ideas and can get featured on our website and Instagram.
The Agenda
Design Thinking
Align on a starting point to identify the customer, make assumptions on the problem and ways to solve the problem.
Do Market Research
Understand our market and preform exploratory interviews and synthesis. Who are we solving for and why?
Find The Problem
Find the pain our persona faces in the space we are exploring. Understand competitors and there differentiators.
Develop a Solution
Come up with solutions to resolve the pain for our persona. Design a product experience and develop the MVP feature sets.
Create The Business Model
Create and refine the business model canvas. Define the metrics that we want to learn and track.
Build the MVP
Build a minimum viable product and help new balance adopt a new market.
Business Goal
1. Drive user adoption, referrals, and engage customers on our application and website.
2. Build a new customer market and increase revenue in the on-demand special editions and designer shoes that are not available in the stores by developing a category in the application and website that allows customers to purchase them easily.
The Product Goal
Dedicated to the new offering of special edition and designer shoes from New Balance by building an engage application or website experience. The audience can be categorized as gender neutral of any age.
Understanding The Target Audience
We started by conducting interviews with the influencers, fashion enthusiasts, shoe collectors to get a deep insight into the problems and opportunities. People that love vintage and designer shoes.
The Problem
New balance is the world’s famous sports footwear and apparel manufacturers that allow users to purchase the newly launched shoes and clothes. But the current user experience makes it difficult for the users to find the special edition shoes tagged by famous influencers on social media like Instagram.
Key problems with the current system:
1. The app doesn’t function properly.
2. Users do not download the application because they don’t think it is useful and interactive.
3. Hard to find special edition and collaboration shoes.
Design Challenge
Goal
Increase the download rate of the New Balance app
Increase the traffic at New Balance web and mobile app
Increase the visibility of New Balance brand name
Solutions
Create an interactive campaign to get the attention of the existing and new customers
Enhance existing application for the customer to provide seamless experience to purchase New Balance special edition line.
Create a feature to locate vintage and collaboration shoes at New Balance mobile and web application
My Responsibilities
While we all worked together on the research, ideation, and visual design phases, I was mainly responsible for the Research and contribution in UX/UI. We synced once a week to make sure that the complete product experience is cohesive
Research
Stakeholder interviews, User persona to help list all constraints and opportunities.
Ideation
Brainstorming ideas, sketches and prioritizing important features for the app.
Visual Design
Responsible for establishing a visual design guideline (typography, colors) for the app’s user interface.
App Design
We all collaborated to the app. I was responsible for building application user scenarios, visual mockups, making iterations from weekly feedback, and designing
final screens. The final designs were prototyped and tested by one of my group members.
Research Phase/ Competitor Analytics
Swot Analysis
The Synthesis
I interviewed youngsters, fashionistas, and shoe lovers to learn what they think about the New Balance shoe department and what they really wish the brand can provide them.
Meet The Personas
Customer Journey
Ideation Phase
Thumbnail Sketches
Who’s our target customers
What will they get from our app
How to make their user experiences easier
How to get their attention to download our app
User Journey Map
How to get attention to download our app?
Journey map from billboard to app
How to create interactions
What can they do and see on our website
Visual Design
We decided to go with a simple color palette to make it easier to navigate.
I picked red because it produces a passion, energy, and joy effect, and it could entice people to buy more. I picked white because it represents nobility, charm, and purity.
Ideation/ Prototyping Phase
A positive interaction solutions
Electronic billboard with a marketing campaign by the bus stop and stations at the selected cities worldwide with special new balance edition to get existing and new customer's attention. As well as the 10% off discount code.
Billboard allows you to scan and direct to the new balance app we created for further engagement.
A new new balance app that allows you to do much more
New Balance/New Instagram/New Website/And New Possibilities
A new Instagram page that allows users to see the trending shoes, special editions and products endorsed by influencers and also provide add to bag and open in safari options.
A new website feature allows you to upload your picture with your favorite product on the website. Later on, the brand will select the participants to be featured on the website and Instagram. Even you can shop special edition(reissue) on website.
REFLECTION
Key Takeaway
This was my third group project in college and it taught me the importance of collaboration. We all worked on every aspect of the project together, meeting up twice each week to review progress, critique and give feedback to each other.
Collaboration is key
Each of us had the responsibility of designing different screens, so we reviewed our progress once a week to make sure the product is cohesive throughout.
Viewing problems from a user’s perspective
Some design decisions may seem too obvious for a designer but may not be obvious to a user. User testing really helped us in making informed design decisions.
Learned new process for building friendly app
I learned how to carefully plan the features and prioritize important ones to increase revenue and the brand's visibility.