Guardian Athletics

Strategy
Journey Map
Multi Touchpoint Products
Metrics

 

Guardian Athletics aims to better protect football players through innovative products that can keep them safer on the field. Their key offering, the Kato Collar, is a discrete, lightweight piece of equipment that allows players to retain full active rang of motion during play, and has been researched to show results up to 30% decrease in head movement following a collision.

Team: Kari Anderson, Traci Shellum, Spencer Sterling

The Challenge

Guardian Athletics had a challenge for their trade show. The trade show was only a physical space but needed to represent their main goal to be the thought leaders for safety on the football field. They have a passion for football and want the players to be safe. Their innovation prevents and protects the players from injuries on the field.

The trade show's typical audience is coaches & trainers. The trade show setting can be difficult to attract this audience. Once that attention is attracted, the booth needed to engage, educate and connect to the attendee, resulting with sales. This single event is currently not attracting the audience to result in sales - impacting the business goals. A multi touch point experience that shares the product with families will create a connection with the coaches. The families will be educated and help influence the trainers and coaches to provide the best equipment for their children's safety.

The Journey

Strategy

Secondary data provided insight that families lacked insight about safety on the field. Instead of keeping their children away from the sport, provide the children proper gear and education...let them play! The team created our goal for the project as a result from our data research.

Journey Map

The Journey Map was the pivotal point, providing the connection of the families to the coach and trainers. I was visually thinking by sketching the experience. The process of displaying our thoughts quickly brought the team to our solution. 

The client prides their local representation and will soon be bring manufacturing local. It is proposed that they invest in a branded truck that can transport the trade show and be a traveling billboard. During High School and College football season they can travel in an approximate 8 hour radius and set up a "tailgating" event to interact with the community about safety in the field.

The concept was to Attract, Engage, Educate and Connect with the families. The atmosphere created at the event is lively and interactive. The client engages and educates the community with interactive tools demonstrating what impacts on the field do to the players. Simply by having the proper gear up to 30% reduction of burners, stingers and head injuries can be prevented. Families can learn this information and feel educated to have productive conversations with their coaches and trainers about keeping their children safe.

Multi Touchpoint Products

Collectively the team created tools that support the multi touch point experience:

• 3D rendering of the experience

• Electronic playbook for families, players, coaches and trainers providing information about safety on the field. Discussion prompts are provided for each of the stakeholders to community with each other their perspectives and concerns.

• Interactive TV demonstrating the use of the Guardian Athletics equpiment (Kato Collar), safety types and other educational resources

• Floor plans and product listing for a trade show experience

Metrics

Utilizing the HEART methodology to define metrics for evaluation, I created an outline to guide the client to success. The outline provided tasks and items necessary for the PRE-GAME activities necessary for the "tailgating" GAME season at High Schools and Colleges. The POST GAME events are the trade shows. The proposed calendar allows the client to impact an influential community that did not attend the trade shows, providing year round exposure. These connections continue due to the sharing of information on social media and digital content.

The client will grow its market influence and prove their commitment to being a thought leader. 

Conclusion

The project provided me an opportunity to collaborate with a team of counterpart UX designers. The team approach allowed each of the team members to shine with their strengths and providing a meaningful solution to the athletic gear company. Partnering with a team of designers allowed us to quickly identify the opportunity to connect the clients goals to the families, who were previously isolated from this wealth of knowledge. Working in a team can be challenging but identifying the goals, strategies and distribution of key components of the project provided a succinct solution for the client.

The team worked in an agile process. Daily stand ups provided us direction on what we needed to accomplish for our daily sprints. Each night we concluded our day with a wrap up and delegation of tasks. I account the use of the agile process to my teams success and team building.