Research - Design - Build
Objective
Our objective was to bring to life commerce opportunities in urban sports by re-imagining how urban athletes interact with sports retailers.
More specifically, our team wanted to understand whether Dick’s Sporting Goods was missing out in the urban population, to learn what urban sports commerce might look like for in the next five years, and whether the urban athlete is the right target customer in the first place.
re-imagining urban sport for DSG
As a dual-degree MBA + MS Design Innovation (MMM Program) candidate, I participated in an immersive 10-week course called Research, Design, Build. The course teaches design-thinking principles, frameworks, and methodologies like design research, ethnography, divergent brainstorming, rapid prototyping, and visual story-telling.
During this project, my team and I worked to unlock consumer insights and plan new market entry for Dick’s Sporting Goods as they look to extend their footprint into urban city centers. Our team was selected as the 2nd place runner up during the design challenge by our client and professors.
Design Research
In an effort to put ourselves in the shoes of the urban athletes, we first had to define what it meant to be an Urban Athlete. To us, an Urban Athlete is someone who lives in an urban city center, and pursues some type of athletic activity at least one time per week. Once we aligned on the definition of an Urban Athlete, we needed to understand how they operate. We conducted 19 ethnographic interviews with Urban Athletes ranging from ages 14-50, and from moderate fitness level to professional fitness level. In order to further understand DSG’s current offering, we conducted 4 site visits in 4 separate cities, and conducted observations at leading retailers such as Nike, Under Armour, and Apple.
creating user personas
In order to further understand each of the varying types of customers we were designing our solution around, we created distinct User Personas each with unique needs, shopping preferences, daily schedules, and customer journey maps. These User Personas helped us ground our potential solutions in desirability, feasibility, and viability.
Our Solution
Getting our hands dirty
After we distilled our findings into observations, grouped them into themes, and unpacked those themes into insights, it was time to begin iterating on potential solutions. We solo-stormed many ideas — some completely far fetched and some more practical — and then came back together to provide feedback on our ideas so as to push each final concept further.
Putting It All Together
Our Prototype
designing a solution for future urban athletes
In order to bring our solution to life, we prototyped a mobile app that brings together Urban Athletes with available courts and sports facilities. Our prototype was built based on hours of interview conversations, field observations, low-fidelity mock-up reviews with current DSG customers, and feedback from Urban Athletes. Scroll through the slider images on the left to learn more!
