Nike was connecting its cross-platform app service offers and growing in-house digital capability.
As Director of Product Strategy and User Experience at AKQA London, my role was to direct and support Nike+ and Nike Global Training to develop and successfully launch a new content-rich app from day one.
The client
Nike is one of the largest sports brands in the world. My clients were with the Nike Global teams based at Nike headquarters in Portland Oregon. These included training, marketing and digital teams.
My role
To lead the product and design team in close collaboration with client design and product leads across Portland and London.
To help direct product strategy and support internal leads to develop the new product under tight timelines.
To grow strategy, user-centred design capability and product development, such as insight-driven feature streams, continuous user testing
To do seamless capability transfer to the internal Nike team post-launch.
The work
Scope
A complete relaunch across product strategy, design, content and rebuild with 20+ designers working across 2 locations, London and Portland. The scope included strategy, content systems, user experience, architecture, interaction design, feature roadmapping and development to launch.
As well as to support capability development to grow full internal product and design teams to hit the ground running on launch.
Description
The Nike Training Club had originally been a free women’s training workout product and service. Nike wanted it to expand across its whole training offer alongside wider digital service eco-system developments and internal capability building.
This work worked closely alongside parallel workstreams across the design system, Nike Running, Nike shop and marketing to support a combined system-wide global launch.
Outcomes
The product soft launched on time across Nike’s global markets to great success with 4-5 star ratings including 21m downloads and 500k weekly workout downloads across 19 languages.
Successful smooth handover from the agency to full internal team with backlogged features launched months after transfer.
Continued ongoing success beyond its initial launch growing its global user base and continuing to innovate in the sector with an unwavering 4.8-star rating and brand expansion (Netflix, strava).
Nike’s apps and data are considered to give Nike an advantage over its competitors. Via its connected membership model which now has over 300 million members as well as behavioual fitness relationships.
Key activities
Connecting stakeholders: My role included connecting across the training and digital ecosystem from marketing, brand design and product.
Championing user-centred design: Building buy-in, and setting up user-centred design practices and research teams. Including dual location UK/US user testing and longitudinal studies across both workouts and product; running and training.
Coaching and support: Supporting and coaching the client team to grow internal capability and capacity in preparation for launch handover to enable sustainable app development beyond the initial agency support.
Feature roadmap: Setup and delivery of prioritised validated feature backlog at handover. Examples include yoga, filtering, in-session workout experience, workout library and content system design.
