Umbro 1350 Brief

Umbro were looking for a way to launch a footwear line in their new 1350 Lifestyle Brand, (1350 being the amount of minutes in the day after a game of football).

The first thing to consider was that in no way, shape or form was Umbro ever considered a 'lifestyle brand', nor has it any experience on that area. Already accomplished 'sports & lifestyle brands' such as Nike and Adidas have an established pedigree, a sense of cool, and a loyal following.

To present Umbro as a viable alternative in that marketplace was the name of the game.

The Real Needs

To do this was a bit of a challenge. Nike and Adidas both know who they are aiming at, but Umbro seems to have no clue.

They appear (by their current publicity) to be aiming at professional footballers and tattooists, a very niche market. This could be an error in judgement, or in communication, and, either way, doesn't ring true.

Umbro has great football heritage and the world loves football. Umbro should have been targeting 'lads'.

The first main task was, then, to aid Umbro in understanding who their true target audience were.

Tapestry Concept

Adidas and Nike communicate their pre-defined lifestyle brand to the public, which works for them. I decided to take this power from Umbro and give it to the public, that is to say, crowdsource the 1350 Lifestyle.

The users would contribute content and feedback to Umbro, from which Umbro would learn, and provide response in that vein.

This would create a conversation between the people that live the '1350 life' and those who enable the '1350 life'.

This would be in the form of an evolving Tapestry of content which catalogues the experiences of many people over time.

The tapestry was a flexible idea which could be employed over several media, such as Point-of-Sale, Web Site, Print and Broadcast media. I focussed, for the project, on a Point-of-Sale format.

1350 Marque

There had to be a marque made which would convey the idea of the 1350 tapestry, simply and effectively. I took elements from the Umbro logo and arranged them into a cross stitch.

This signifies the connections of different people and experiences into a single entity.

Tech. Development

I spent time observing customers in shoe shops, and the first contact with a pair of shoes is the eyes, and the second is always the hands.

Umbro's shoe designers take care of the visual elements of the shoes, and I decided to do more with how the touch is incorporated into the buying & exploring process.

For this, simple, tactile interaction was needed to view the tapestry, and I decided this would be through embedding a 3-axis accelerometer into the footwear, and use it as a controller.

I spent several weeks working on developing code to run a Phidget accellerometer to control movement & sounds in Flash (which I found no evidence of having been done before), and coded everything from scratch.

Look & Feel

This device had to sweat Umbro. For this I created a very strong Look & Feel toolkit, involving sets of icons, instructional diagrams, patterns and signage.

The visuals really had to express the values of the Umbro and the 1350 brand, and they did this very successfully

Visual Prototype

After an awful lot of maths and fitting the catalogue section of the tapestry with the social input, the visuals and movement of the programme were ready to use.

I used the Twitter API to bring in information from Twitter to populate the application.

Sonic Branding

50% of 16-24 year-olds stay longer in a shop if the right music is playing"

Umbro also has strong ties with popular bands such as Kasabian, and there is a certain 'sound' attached to the target audience of the 1350 brand.

I wrote and recorded a short piece of music, whose aim was to capture this mood and sound. The music was all recorded and mixed in Ableton.

The EQ'ing was a real challenge, as the concept was for the user to be able to control the volume and pan of individual parts of the song.

This was to really immerse the user in the interaction with the product. When the sound plays on repeat after a time the users lose track of time and spend longer using the application, and the longer this happens for, the higher the chance of them making a purchase.

User Testing

Having known the product inside out, the product needed to be tested by people with no prior knowledge.

Initially I conducted testing sessions with people strictly within the target audience. The reactions were very interesting:

First of all, they took 15 seconds to work out the function of the shoe with regard to navigation. Next they spent 30 seconds moving the screen around to get more userd to it, and then they spent the next 2 minutes "trying to explore and see everything", and when they link the movement of the screen with the change in music they acheive a "totally immersive experience"

The product was also on show at an exhibition, and so people who had no idae of the project could experiment with the piece.

One person described the ease-of-use as "A piece of p*ss", and for an Interaction Designer, that is a great thing to hear.

Fully Functional

The coding was strong and the product worked flawlessly in terms of interaction. The feedback from users was very positive, and it was fantastic to see people engaging with the product, feeling the tactile qualities of Umbro's shoes.

There is a video to come, and this project will be the starting point of another, which explores socially-generated music. So watch out.