Context & Challenge

ASICS wanted to reach a new audience: fitness-minded millennials. The target was loosely defined, and there wasn’t a clear idea of what to do, just a broad goal to create a digital fitness experience that would actually resonate with a new market.

The challenge:
First, figure out who this audience really is. Then, design something that solves the real fitness challenges they face day to day.

Approach & Process

First step: get everyone on the same page. We ran workshops to align on goals, unpack assumptions, and start defining our target user. From there, we ran a competitive audit to spot gaps and opportunities in the digital fitness space.

To validate our assumptions, we ran two phases of research:

• Moderated interviews with users aged 23–36 who worked out 3–5 times a week, focused on validating the target persona and uncovering unmet needs.

• Observational studies, where we shadowed users through real workouts in there territory to understand their routines, challenges, and mindset.

This research surfaced two key personas:

The Fitness Explorer – our primary focus. These were curious, motivated users looking for variety, personalization, and flexibility, but they often struggled with structure and being consistant.

The Runkeeper Cross Trainer – existing Runkeeper users who used fitness and strength training to support their running. They were already engaged, motivated, and living in the ASICS ecosystem. This gave us an immediate opportunity to serve a real need while building toward something broader.

Solution

Once we had a clear picture of who we were designing for and what they needed, we moved into the fun part; making it real. The goal was to build something that felt flexible, approachable, and motivating for both groups.

We used tools like brainwriting and mini sprints to come up with ideas fast, then built quick prototypes to test what worked. We focused on making the experience feel smooth, the content easy to access, and the workouts adaptable to different goals.

We tested every version with real users from both personas. That helped us dial in the right balance: variety and freedom for Fitness Explorers, and more structure and purpose for Runkeeper Cross Trainers.

In the end, we build a flexible system that served up what people actually needed, whether that was a mix of full-body workouts or a focused plan to support a training schedule.