NIKEiD Shoe Builder

Fifteen years after pioneering the concept of consumer-customized products, NIKEiD (presently known as Nike By You) needed to break out of iterative design updates and completely rethink the shoe customization experience. So Nike asked my team at R/GA to partner with them in reinventing the digital shoe builder experience with a mobile-first mindset.

We set out to create a shoe builder experience that seamlessly wove into the larger site journey, gave people a broad range of inspiration and guidance, and offered them the cleanest, easiest interface in NIKEiD’s history. We wanted to change the mental models around how customers think about customization, and change the role of customization within the Nike digital shopping experience.

Over the course of seven months, I worked alongside a creative director, strategy director, design director, visual designer, and front-end developer to dive deep into the world of NIKEiD. The process of going from a big, bold ask to a production-ready set of features encompassed a diverse range of activities:

• Conducting research and design workshops with the client and customers
• Crafting several rounds of concepting and iteration in collaboration with the internal product and brand teams at Nike
• Developing a fully-functional HTML prototype of the end-to-end shoe builder experience
• Running multiple rounds of user testing across various demographics in the US, Europe, and Asia

The simple but powerful builder experience we created was a game-changer when it went live on Nike’s site in 2016. We hit the mark in creating a much more intuitive interface around the builder itself, but on top of that we introduced a couple of key features that reinvigorated NIKEiD brand and business. Customers were now able to draw from more points of inspiration, effortlessly achieve well-crafted designs, and save, share, and purchase their creations with ease.