Context & Challenge

ASICS set out to reach a new audience: fitness-minded millennials. While the target was loosely defined, there was no clear product vision, just a broad goal to create a digital fitness solution that would resonate with this emerging segment.

Our challenge was twofold:
Define who fitness-minded millennials really are, and design a product that solves their most pressing fitness challenges.

Approach & Process

We kicked off the project with stakeholder workshops to align on goals, explore assumptions, and shape an early hypothesis of the target user. From there, we conducted a competitive audit to identify gaps and opportunities in the digital fitness space.

User Research

To validate our assumptions, we broke our research into two key phases:

• Moderated interviews with users aged 23–36 who worked out regularly (3–5x/week), focused on validating the persona and uncovering unmet needs.

• Observational studies, where we shadowed users through their fitness routines to understand real-world behavior, friction, and mindset.

This research led to the identification of two distinct personas:

• The Fitness Explorer – our core target: a curious, motivated user seeking variety, personalization, and flexibility in their fitness journey, but often struggling with structure and long-term consistency.

• The Runkeeper Cross Trainer – an existing Runkeeper user who uses digital strength and fitness training to support their running goals. This group was highly engaged, already within ASICS’ ecosystem, and motivated by performance outcomes. Leveraging this segment offered immediate value: Runkeeper’s brand equity and user base gave us a ready-made audience we could serve while continuing to pursue growth in the broader general fitness space.

Solution

With clearly defined personas and a validated problem space, we moved into design. Our goal was to create an experience that supported both user types while remaining flexible, approachable, and motivating.

We used creative ideation techniques like brainwriting and mini design sprints to generate a wide range of concepts. Then we rapidly prototyped key features, focusing on usability, content delivery, and adaptability.

Each iteration was tested with real users from both persona groups. This dual approach allowed us to refine the experience for both audiences: Fitness Explorers who valued novelty and freedom, and Runkeeper Cross Trainers who needed targeted strength workouts to complement their run training.

The resulting product offered dynamic content paths that supported users based on their goals, whether that meant a variety of full-body workouts or focused cross-training plans that aligned with a running schedule.