educational dashboard
UX research
Interaction Design
Ui design
Usability testing
Branding
Overview
MY ROLE
UX RESEARCH
INTERACTION DESIGN
UI DESIGN
USABILITY TESTING
NOTE: I am not employed by adidas. This case study showcases a theoretical project using adidas products as content examples.
BACKGROUND
Adidas retail stores offer a wide array of products. The company carefully designs each product with a customer's needs in mind. Learning about each product's design, technology, history, and style foundation helps retail associates connect a customer to their ideal product.
OPPORTUNITY
There are several sources the retail teams use to learn about Adidas products. All are resource intensive and difficult to keep up to date. We need to provide a one-stop training destination highlighting current and upcoming products, Brand awareness, and retail processes.
Solution
I created an easy-to-update training dashboard that uses gamification and product discounts to motivate employees to learn.
- how many meals are included in their day
- errors made when adding food to the diary
- multiple nutrition goals for different days
- the exact increment of water to track
How did I land on this solution?
RESEARCH GOAL
Identify the pros and cons of current product training strategies.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES
EXPERT INTERVIEW
USER INTERVIEWS
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
constraints
- I did not have direct access to adidas retail employees. Instead, I sought out interview participants who worked at Footlocker, Dicks Sporting Goods, Fabletics, and a ski resort retail group
- I did not have enough time to design the full experience. Instead, I focused on the end-user side of the product and limited myself to 3 tasks
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
- How do retail associates interact with product training materials?
- What are the obstacles retail associates face when learning about products?
- Do associates feel prepared to explain the features and benefits of products to customers?
Research
Retail employees' motivations to learn are related to their long-term career goals
User interviews
I conducted three quick gorilla-style interviews by going to the local mall and asking employees of Foot Locker and Dick’s Sporting Goods how they learn about the products they sell. I conducted one more extended interview over zoom with a participant who worked at a Fabletics retail store a few months earlier this year. These interviews helped me shape a picture of what motivates retail employees.
I found correlations between their knowledge confidence and how their job fits into their career goals. None of the participants had significant, structured learning provided by their employers.
Meet Emma and Jason.
Based on my findings from my user interviews, I created two personas.
Personas
The participants I interviewed fell into two camps of people. Folks in management positions with the ambition to climb the ladder were passionate about the products and learned by consistently consuming media about the industry outside of work hours.
Conversely, folks who work part-time wanted a stress-free job and didn't want to devote extra time to learning. I decided to focus on this second group to create my primary persona.
Emma
store associate
“
I need consistency to learn. I would rather learn in regular increments than four solid hours of training at the beginning.
Age
21
Employee type
Part-time
Ambitions
Sees this job as temporary to help get to her next chapter.
background / passions
- Is currently in school
- Has an interest in fashion and has taken fashion courses in the past
motivations
- Wants to feel confident talking to customers (doesn’t want this job to be a source of stress)
- Isn’t interested in spending tons of time learning on her own if she doesn’t have to
Pain points
- Has to rely on her team lead to learn about new products or policies
- Is sometimes confused about products or policies
Jason
store manager
“
I wish there were better ways for my employees to learn about products besides listening to me ramble on about them.
Age
26
Employee type
Full-time
Ambitions
Plans to stay with the company and climb the ladder.
background / passions
- Has some college education
- Loves sneakers and street-style culture
motivations
- Wants to be run a successful and profitable store
- Wants his staff to be somewhat self-sufficient
Pain points
- Does not want staff to be on their phones (per corporate policy), but notices that they sometimes use them to quickly look up product
- Doesn’t have adequate resources to teach staff about product without spending time teaching them in person
- Isn’t able to motivate staff to use the learning tools that are available
How might we motivate users like Emma to learn about products, the brand and retail processes?
Now that I had my personas mapped out, I was able to narrow down my problem statement to be focused on the user and start to look towards a solution.
How have others addressed this problem of motivation?
Expert interview
I interviewed a Director of Retail who oversees retail shops at a ski resort. She shared her observations of her employee's appetite for learning about products they carry and how that affects their performance.
Her employer does not have a specific budget to teach employees about products. However, many of her employees use product training apps provided by various brands. These apps are popular with her employees because they provide a wholesale discount as an incentive.
This information guided me to competitive analysis, specifically to learn about effective design patterns.
Researched platforms
- EXPERT VOICE (Black Diamond, Helly Hansen, Mammut, and Garmin)
- ELUCIDAT (Decathlon, Benefit, Metro Bank)
- WRANX (VF Corporation: Supreme, Vans, The North Face, Dickies, Napapijri, Timberland)
- PATAGONIA
Popular design patterns
Choosing to learn about a topic
User flow
I first made 5 task flows concerning choosing a topic, or learning about a topic. Then I narrowed the tasks to 3 essential ones and created a user flow. In my first pass at this, I thought the user would browse programs and add them to their dashboard from “Manage Programs,” and then they would have to go to the Dashboard to start learning. As you’ll see later, I discovered this was confusing and limiting. After revisions were made to wireframes, I ended up revising this user flow to the version you see here.
See the Entire user flow in figjam
Design
Design process
I had certain things I knew I wanted to include to motivate my user, Emma. These things included a home base dashboard, badges or achievements, quizzes, and ways to mark lessons as complete.
I started with sketches to quickly see how these features might come together.
Wireframe Sketches
Lo-Fi Wireframes
Manage programs
Dashboard
Dashboard
Dashboard
Unit page
Dashboard
QUIZ
Dashboard
Testing the Lo-FI Prototype
I tested the lo-fi prototype with four participants.
Through this process, I discovered that the "Manage Program" pages confused 3 out of 4 users:
- The participants did not understand the difference between a Program and a Unit.
- The users said they found the long list of programs and units overwhelming.
- Another user said they thought the page should have less on it with links that go to each item: a page for completed programs, a page for adding programs, a page for units, etc.
- One user said she felt like she may want to start learning the program straight from this page. She also said she would want to be able to add a unit to her dashboard from within the program that it was a part of.
Manage Programs becomes Learn
Additional Updates
“This seems like a great idea. I have tried a lot of food tracking apps, including Lifesum. It was a really nice app, but ultimately I felt that Lifesum was too rigid.”
Usability test participant
Conclusion
What's next
During this theoretical project, I focused on the end-user side of the dashboard. However, for this product to be truly successful, it has to be possible to implement efficiently and cost-effectively. My initial idea to address this issue was to create a content management system that is easy for the individual business units to add to each time a new product comes out. The system would use the same images and content created for the Ecomm team for a product launch.
To bring the product to life, I would need to get buy-in from the appropriate channels at Adidas to implement the discount associated with the achievements. I would also need to test my assumption further that these real-life discounts are a critical factor in the motivational success of the product.
Finally, I would need to start the design process again from the content management side. I would start by interviewing the Global Sales Team and learning about their process for implementing training materials.
