Nike Garment Kiosk
From 2009 to 2012, I worked at two different agencies: Steady in NYC and AKQA in SF. I was grateful to be on a diverse mix of projects that matched my interests (sneakers, games, and new technology). These links direct to some older documentation: Nike, Vogue, Audi, American Express, Def Jam, Verizon Wireless, Haze.
Print Custom T-shirts
In 2010, Nike launched a retail pilot to "create brand energy" using custom touch-based interfaces and a treasure trove of exclusive logos, artwork, patterns, and colors. My small team designed, built, tested, and installed software and hardware for the initial release at Finish Line HQ in Indiana.
Summary
My role: Interaction Designer
- Define the on-screen user experience, beginning with flow diagrams and wireframes
- Collaborate with visual design and engineering teams to test and implement
- Custom build 32" touch-screen kiosks (10 of these)
- Train Finish Line retail staff
My team: Creative Director, Tech Director, Account Manager, Visual Designer, and 3 Engineers
Target: In-store shoppers at select Finish Line locations in New York, Florida, Ohio, and Indiana
Impact: The pilot led to my agency winning more business. We iterated on the software to support additional garments, and the initiative expanded to stores across the country.
Media coverage: Freshness, AdAge
Challenge
Nike put out a brief (5mb pdf) to a number of agencies with the objective, "Create brand energy with the 17-23 year old sport runner consumer by leveraging nike running products and experiences." How might you respond to something so abstract? Once a concept is approved, how can you make that real?
More specifically, my individual challenge was multi-part (including designing space, hardware, and touch points for various user types), but my main challenge was to imagine an experience and interface unlike any I had ever seen. A shopper comes into a store and is to be presented with a 32" touch screen. How might this screen inspire them to explore, design, and ultimately purchase a new t-shirt on-the-fly.
Process
The "make it your own" project was a long-term one. The first chunk of work happened over a 5-6 month period. It was unlike most agency work that ended after a single release or campaign. In fact, with continued iteration, the project spanned more than a year. I contributed to each step below, but those highlighted were fully my responsibilities.
- Brainstorm and research solutions
- Build a deck and pitch
- Kickoff project with the client
- Synthesize reference materials
- Plan internally with cross-functional team
- Create interaction designs
- Create visual designs
- Collect internal feedback (business and tech)
- Iterate on designs
- Client review
- Iterate more
- Begin building
- Collaborate with engineering through the release
Sketches
Generating designs for this project was super interesting, because the largest interactive screen I had previously designed for was a desktop. Knowing the interfact would be a 32" 2-D surface, I started with not only my graph paper moleskin but also a giant sketchpad so the life-size screen would be more tangible with UI to scale.
Flows and wireframes
After having a set of notes and low-fidelity pen and paper drawings, I moved to digital creation, using Illustrator and InDesign. Here is a late stage export of the Full Interaction Design Doc (54 pages 2mb pdf).
Visuals
From flows and wireframes, we moved into visual design. Kiosk UI / Visual Designs (42 pages 12mb pdf)
Delivery
I was on the 3-person team that traveled to Indiana to setup and launch the pilot. I collaborated with our Creative Director and Visual Designer to build a Marketing Plan (80 pages 12mb pdf) to accelerate the evolution of this pilot. I also assembled a lite User Guide (19 pages 2 mb pdf) for the setup.
Outcome
I learned all about retail usability, garment printers, diy touch screens, and so much more. Our squad was able to keep shipping the software, and the client relationship with Nike continued to improve. We shared data (example metrics pdf - 26 pages / 8mb) with the stores over the course of the summer and evolved the system to support hoodies and additional environments like web and mobile.
