Employees were struggling to find brand content in the company because of the inadequate platforms. They were trying to get contents from different web pages or other employees which ended up with various number of problem that include malware, loss of time and frustration.

With the involvement of brand department, I learned that brand employees use a tool to get the visual that they want. I used the tool for long time while doing interviews with users to gather the current restrictions of the old tool:

The initiative created awareness; therefore with the help of brand director a cross-functional team was being recruited to move faster. productive and to keep everyone focused:

– Sr. UX/UI Designer (Me)
– Brand Director
– Finance Director
– DGTM Manager
– Brand Manager
– Sales Executive x2
– Sr. Software Engineer

With data that we gathered from employees around world and structured discussions that include HMWs on white-boarding and voting with the team, we defined the problem statement as this:

Our current product was designed to be database of all seasonal brand visuals (videos, images, banners, etc.) for employee. We have observed by doing user surveys and interview that the product isn’t meeting these goals because of lack of content, performance issues and unfriendly user experience, which is causing low productivity within employee.

How might we improve/design our product so can we get our desired brand visuals instantly and easily without asking anyone?

Because of the technical restrictions of the old tool, designing a mobile application where all users can get desired content without any frictions was only option. In order to get budget approved, we had to align with the company strategy so the solution creates big impact.

With the right direction of our directors in the team, we found out that lack of brand (story, technology and product) knowledge and social engagement within employee was something that company was struggling with. Therefore designing the new application in a way that creates social engagement between users while learning more about the brand created big impression on higher stakeholders.

To create an optimal mobile application, we had to decide the user personas that are going to use the application. Inner employee was the main user persona but making platform accessible everyone around the world was really attractive idea. From the research that we’ve conducted we learned that some contents could be confidential, so we decided to create an app for our internal users only.

In addition to user research, we’ve conducted competitive research to find out what’s going on the market and how can we be one step ahead related with our product in order to create premium Nike experience with our users. From social networking perspective Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest, Flickr, Vimeo and similar products, as well as digital products of Adidas, Under Armour, New Balance, Puma, Asics, etc. were the main focus of our moodboards.

To create a tool that satisfies all users need, we’ve performed various numbers of focus groups, interviews and surveys with the employees around the world. After gathering the information, I’ve conducted design thinking workshops with the core team to define the strategy and requirements of the mobile application. With card sorting, voting and prioritization we defined information architecture of the application and decide what’s most important features to finish for MVP.

We divided functionalities of the mobile application in several design sprints with backlog prioritisation. Daily stands ups, bi-weekly sprint plannings, weekly refinement and design review sessions are set by scrum master with selective design and development team along with core team.

It was very important to create wireframes of the application for visualisation and UX strategy. I designed various numbers of sketches and wireframes to give clear insights to the team along with high-fidelity mock ups.

Even though personas of the users are decided, one thing was certain that all of the users are Nike users; therefore application should represent the brand guidelines perfectly. To achieve this challenge, I did comprehensive research while working with our brand team on other Nike applications like NRC, NTC, SNKRS APP and NIKE.COM to create pixel perfect experience from font to the other UI components.

One of the most important goals of the company was to increase Nike+ membership for Nike applications. I did analytical research about the number of current employees around the world and proposed to create Nike+ memberships to the all employee in order to use the application. Since Nike+ membership allows user to use all other Nike applications, with this solution we killed two birds with one stone.

Even though it was stated that application is an absolute necessity for the company, tool had to offer something unique and inspiring. Because of this, I designed timeline section for the application to create unique brand evolution experience. The idea gathered huge interest, in a way to bring the convenience and different way of social interaction to all internal employees.

Conducting “Usability testing”, “Diary studies”, “Five-Second Testing” and “A/B Testing” sessions with users before the development really helped us to improve the user experience. Instead of list view, using banner view helped users to navigate between categories easily. Bottom menu is removed with these techniques in order to enable more screen usage.

Along with the company strategy, our aim was to create a social brand experience; hence there is a saying in the company that if we are going to do something we have to do it with Nike way, we decided the name the product NIKEWAY.

In order to create dynamic and sportive onboarding for application, I worked closely with our brand team to find the right visuals. At the end, I decided to use Lebron James and basketball visuals to give the jumping to the new social platform feeling to the users.

From the beginning, our top priority was to represent the brand perfectly and create constancy with other applications. Therefore, I inspired from Nike Trade Gothic Font and put emphasis on the word “Way” to design NIKEWAY.