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A Platform to Create Joyful New Balance Community for Users to Share Their NB Lives to Boost The Buying Power and Form Diverse NB Culture

Group Project  /  Role: Idea Thinker, Strategist, Analyst, UI Designer, UX Designer, Motion Graphic Designer, Prototyper

July, 2020

New Balance Life (NB Life) is a life-sharing social networking function designed for New Balance, a sports apparel company with over 100 years of history. People love to show themselves. NB life allows NB users to establish themselves by sharing their NB experience. Combining with the online try-on function, NB users will quickly locate the preferred item by knowing the product from other users' NB experience. NB Life creates and diverse NB culture. It also benefits NB by promoting sales, gathering product feedback, and identifying the hot NB products efficiently.

Research

Basic Info:

New Balance (NB) is an American sports footwear and apparel brand that was established in 1906. It is one of the world's major sports footwear and apparel manufacturers and maintains a manufacturing presence in the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom for the European market.

New Balance claims to differentiate their products with technical features, such as blended gel inserts, heel counters and a greater selection of sizes, particularly for very narrow or very wide widths.

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NB Experience Guide:

New Balance (NB) currently have an experience guide app where registered members can get up to date information of NB Experience Programs and Events. But the app rating and feedbacks are low.

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Competitive Analysis: 

Among all the sports footwear and apparel brands, beyond the shopping app, Nike and Adidas developed workout apps for members, and the app ratings are high.

 

Nike Run Club is devoted to encouraging users to pursue running excellence by challenging themselves for a new running achievement. Nike Training Club is committed to helping all levels' users to complete the routine at any time in any place. It also ranks No.3 of five best Workout Apps in the website: Compare and Choose The Best One.  Adidas Running App Runtastic provides a similar function as Nike Run Club with a relatively easier expectation setting and add running shoes tracking and reminding function. Adidas Training by Runtastic is identical to Nike Training Club. All these fitness apps provide training videos and personalized plans. 

The workout apps from Nike and Adidas are more focused on helping the users maintain their exercise routines for a healthy body.

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Strategy Generation

Success Wins at The Turning Point, Not The Start. 

The workout apps of Nike and Adidas are very mature. New balance should find the new battle ground to win the market share.

Rethink the 

Challenges

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Competitors are very strong & the market of workout app is growing but hard to standout.

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  • The New Balance Experience Guide is not well-developed. It has a low rating, and users have login issues.

  • Nike and Adidas's workout apps are very competitive and keep large market shares.

  • Many fitness apps and websites are available for people on providing training videos and customizing users' exercise plans beyond Nike and Adidas.

  • Workout apps have great diversity and are specialized in different focus; they are developed by nutrition institutions, medical devices companies, fitness brands, etc.

  • With different workout apps, many people still complain that it is hard to follow the exercise routine. 

The Breakthrough Point 

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The Inspiration

People love themselves, they want to share their lives with completely control.

The popularity of the content of social media

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User interviews show there's an increasing tide nowadays for people to show their body as long as they have confidence and feel good about themselves; many people who keep exercising would like to share their exercise tips; for most of the people, they would like to share their life experience, like hiking, running, walking along the coast, etc.

Online try-on function will provide continuous incentive to attract users stay in the app

Instant try-on function for users is not only providing a trying experience but also stimulating their curiosity of testing different results on themselves. Many mobile makeup apps, like YouCam Makeup, Facey, are utilizing this psychological effect.

​When people see new balance users' exercise life, they might want to try the related product new balance users wear. Instant try-on function can quickly fulfill this need. Plus people can choose to uploading picture instead of opening camera. They can upload a previous photo with a better figure to try the products, which will motivate them more for more exercising. 

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The

Niche

We have so many life-sharing social media platforms, but we don't have such platforms specific for exercise life. 

 

We believe that by introducing an exercise experience sharing platform, people who feel boring and not used to workout will experience a fun and joyful exercise journey to build up their health. Meanwhile we will utilize exercise-sharing platform with instant try-on function to connect customers tightly with New Balance. 


We will know this to be true when the New Balance market share increases through the high frequency use of this exercise-sharing platform

Three Words:

Fun;  Colorful;  Be yourself

Slogan:

New Balance, New Life

Logo:

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Internal function:

Since New Balance already has the New Balance Experience Guide app. So the exercise life sharing platform will be designed as one of the NB Experience Guide's internal functions.

NB users can share their exercise life, training tips, diet tips, the preferred NB products, etc., through photos, videos.

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Persona

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Tom

 

  • Age: 37

  • Job: Accountant

  • Education: Bachelor of Finance

  • Marital Status: Married

  • Family: Two kids

Needs & Wants:

  • to connect people who has similar exercise interest.

  • to keep weekly exercise.

  • to maintain the interesting of doing exercise.

  • a flexible and effective exercise schedule.

Preference:

  • A way to make exercise life with more fun and more flexible.

  • A effective way to keep fit.

 

Pain points:

  • Exercise is synonymous with boring. 

  • Does not have a regular time to exercise.

  • Hard to maintain exercise habits.

 

Goals:

  • Eliminate big belly.

  • Build more muscles.

  • Keep in shape.

  • ​Stay healthy and energetic.

Needs & Wants:

  • Lose weight.

  • To be more beautiful and attractive.

  • A effective way to lose weight.

  • An easier and fun way to do exercise.

  • To maintain motivation on exercising.

Preference:

  • A way to enjoy the exercise life.

  • A way to lose weight effectively, but not painful.

 

Pain points:

  • Feel boring about doing exercise.

  • There's always something for her is more important than doing exercise

  • Hard to maintain a regular exercise life.

Goals:

  • Lose 30 lbs first.

  • Ideal weight is 105 lbs.

  • Keep fit after achieved 105 lbs.

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Laura

 

  • Age: 34

  • Job: elementary school teacher

  • Education: Bachelor of Education

  • Marital Status: Single

  • Family: No plans

Ideation

Story Board

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UX

User-testing is conducted after the mid-fidelity design through prototyping. After several round user-testing, the UX design is been modified and final confirmed.

Initial UX Design

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Final UX Design (after several around user-testing)

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Potential Solutions

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Improved Strategies

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Functions can be accessed by non-members.

Strategy 1: Increasing NB public influence through the non-constrain 'Share', 'Comments', and 'Tags' functions.

When opening the NB life on a cell phone, NB users' new posts will automatically show up after the flash page. Non-members can watch directly without registration. The Comments, Share, and Tags functions are also available for them, which can significantly enlarge New Balance's public influence by allowing people (members., non-members) to share, comment on NB users' life and see the related NB products on any social media platforms freely, NB online store with Like and Cart functions also can be accessed freely by non-members. 

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Strategy 2: To better motivate NB users by providing the 'Select A Picture' function to allow them uploading a satisfying photo to project their after exercise look.  

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Strategy 3: Add the 'Similar Items' function to the try-on room to enhance the user experience and stimulate the buying power.

UI

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Prototyping

©2024 by Jing Wang Designs

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