Nike Training Club App

Project overview

The Nike Training Club (NTC) app is a personalised training service featuring 100+ workouts from trainers and Nike athletes including Rory Mcllroy, Ashton Eaton and celebs like Ellie Golding.

It contains weekly featured workouts and personalised, adaptive training with the aim to deliver expertise and motivation to get fit. To share and compare with friends and the Nike+ community.

My work focuses on the set-up process of a personalised training plan and completing a session within a training plan.

The NTC iPhone app successfully launched in August 2016. Below is a snapshot of my work to convey the thinking behind some of the design solutions.

Client
AKQA design agency | Nike | 2015

My role
Senior UX Architect.

Many people worked on this project of which my specific involvement included landscape analysis, understanding the athlete* and what and how Nike delivers to the athlete*.

I worked within the AKQA London design team, working with Nike producers and designers in Portland.

Deliverables
Landscape analysis document, scamp wireframe flows, visual prototypes, user testing conclusions document including detailed wireframe recommendations.

Landscape analysis

I contributed to delivering a landscape analysis of current training tools. Offering technically advanced methods of tracking, analysing and monitoring athletic performance across multiple devices. Including strengths, weaknesses, key takeaways and opportunities. Below is just one example from the final document.

Setting up a personalised training program

To bring initial ideas to life through sketching flows with rationale. Includes both the set-up process and post-assessment experience as part of the ideation stage.

Post assessment and program experience

Visual designs for user testing

Visual screens were provided by the AKQA design team. Thinking consisted of how user journeys and interactions can be consistent across the Nike ecosystem in this case, consistency between NTC and the Nike Running Club (NRC) app. From analytics we know that athletes use both apps so consistency across both experiences is paramount for seamless usage.

Examples of prototypes

I then took these screens in the form of sketch files and adapted them to create a tappable prototype using Flinto.

NTC Prototype

NRC Prototype

User testing and recommendations

I then worked closely with 2 user researchers (in London and Portland) to help create the test scripts. The primary aim to understand if the training plans for NTC and NRC are easy to set up.

Testing included 8 users (both runners and trainers) in London and 8 in Portland.

Conclusions

What worked well

What needs more work

Users are receptive to the idea of having a plan.
Users love the quality of look and feel including the imagery.
The set-up flow to create a personalised plan did not cause any issues for users.
The plan options for running are clearly differentiated and appealed to different levels of runner.

Key USPs for plan are not being conveyed to users.
Plan options not always clear.
User’s goals and Nike’s plans are not always aligned.
Users want to compare before committing to a plan.
Users need plans that can accommodate their changing lives and schedules.
Users want plans to adapt to activities they already do.
Users were often confused to where ‘Plan’ is located.

Recommendations

Below are some of my wireframe recommendations to solve the issues highlighted in the conclusions.

Successfully launched!

NTC successfully launched in August 2016 followed by the new NRC app in September 2016. A fantastic achievement by all those involved!

Results

120% increase in weekly active users.

In excess of 21m downloads.

iOS app rating of 4.8.

NTC is a repeat App Store Editors' Choice Award winner.

Status of number one fitness app in 23 countries.

Key takeaways

Interesting to work within a 24 hour operation, whereby I work during the day in England and hand over to Portland where they then work during our night and hand back over for us to start again in the morning. Thus creating a continual cycle of rapid iteration with daily deliverables on many of the Nike projects.

Working within an ultra talented team and launching massive, high profile products with a demanding and challenging client is hugely rewarding.

Client recommendations

"Michael is an absolutely stellar UX practitioner and leader — experienced across the entire UCD process. In his time at AKQA, I relied on him to work directly with high-profile clients, drive their business forward, deliver quality work and to be almost entirely self-sufficient. He has an amazingly even temperament and works very well under pressure. I would consider myself very lucky to have him back on the team."

Drew Huddleston, Executive User Experience Director, AKQA.

"Michael is a pleasure to work with. His considered and collaborate approach brings out the best in the people he is working with as well as helping create a good team culture. Adept at leading multiple projects, knowing how and when to get into the weeds and create wires and when to take a step back to look across everything from more of a strategic point of view. He also possesses the wonderful skill of being flexible in his solutions, understanding how and why other products on other parts of the business he is working on can shift and change the direction of the product he is working on.

I really enjoyed working with Michael at AKQA and hope I will get to again in the future."

James Chorley, Creative Director at AKQA.