Adidas LockerRoom

Elevating the Game

Adidas approached our team to reimagine their LockerRoom platform—a cutting-edge solution for sports teams worldwide to design and order custom kits. From grassroots clubs to professional teams, the platform aims to create a dynamic space where users can collaborate on personalised team apparel. Working closely with Adidas’s Global Team Sports (GTS) division, we embarked on a mission to elevate the user experience and drive the platform's short- and long-term success. Our goal was to set a new standard in the sports apparel industry, enhancing user engagement, increasing sales, and building brand loyalty.

Challenge

The GTS team identified key areas for improvement within the existing platform. Despite being an innovative tool, the LockerRoom platform’s user experience needed refinement to meet the needs of a broad user base, from sales representatives to club managers and individual athletes. The challenge was to create a seamless and engaging journey that not only simplified the design and ordering process but also optimised internal processes like account management, customer service, and order fulfilment. Ultimately, we aimed to enhance both the front-end user experience and the back-end operations that support it.

Understanding the user

Our design journey began with extensive user research to understand the needs of diverse stakeholders. We collaborated with teams across multiple global locations, including Herzogenaurach, Portland, Amsterdam, Belfast, and Bogotá. Through user interviews, focus groups, and usability testing, we gathered critical insights that informed our design decisions. We discovered that users needed a more intuitive process for customising and ordering team kits, while internal stakeholders required tools that streamlined their workflows and reduced manual tasks.

Designing the Experience

With a clear understanding of the challenges, we set about redesigning the platform’s user interface and experience. We employed a blend of design thinking, UX, and service design methods tailored to the needs of the GTS team. Our approach included:

  • Vision and Strategy:
    We worked with Adidas to define a long-term vision and strategic roadmap, prioritising features that would have the most significant impact on users.

  • Collaborative Sprints:
    We facilitated collaborative design sprints, bringing together cross-functional teams to ideate, prototype, and test solutions rapidly.

  • Holistic Service Design:
    We focused on both the on-stage (user-facing) and back-stage (internal operations) elements of the service, ensuring that improvements were felt throughout the entire user journey.

  • User-Centred Enhancements:
    Iterative testing allowed us to validate design choices and refine the platform continuously, ensuring that every feature met real user needs.

  • Streamlined Interface:
    We redesigned the teamwear customisation flow, making it faster and more intuitive for users to create and order their kits.

  • Introduction of Weight Room:
    To address inefficiencies in Adidas’s internal processes, we developed Weight Room—a dedicated product designed to streamline artwork approval and order management. This tool consolidated multiple tasks that were previously spread across various non-Adidas platforms, allowing staff to manage their work in one cohesive system. This not only reduced the time and effort needed for order processing but also significantly enhanced the overall efficiency of the back-end operations.

  • Enhanced Order Management:
    By optimising back-end processes, we reduced manual work for sales reps and customer service teams, improving overall efficiency.

  • Engaging User Journey:
    We introduced features that made the platform more engaging, such as real-time previews, easy-to-use design tools, and options for sharing designs with team members.

  • Proactive Validation Loops:
    Incorporating ongoing feedback loops ensured that our designs were continuously validated by actual users and stakeholders, enhancing stakeholder buy-in.

Key Enhancements

Outcomes and Impact

  • Increased NPS:
    The platform’s Net Promoter Score rose by +60 points during our collaboration, reflecting improved user satisfaction and engagement.

  • Empowering Teams with Insights:
    We enabled the GTS team to connect user insights with business considerations, using data-driven decisions to inform future UX and UI solutions.

  • Improved Efficiency with Weight Room:
    The Weight Room product significantly streamlined the internal processes of artwork approval and order management, moving Adidas staff away from disparate platforms to a single, unified tool.

  • Global Collaboration Success:
    Our work spanned continents, involving teams from multiple Adidas offices, demonstrating the power of a unified, collaborative approach.

Reflecting on Impact

This project was an incredible opportunity to transform a complex, multi-faceted platform into a user-centred experience that empowers sports teams worldwide. By focusing on the needs of both end-users and internal stakeholders, we set the stage for LockerRoom to become a leader in the sports apparel market. The experience reinforced the value of iterative design, collaboration, and a relentless focus on user needs in driving meaningful innovation.

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