Jordan Team App
Role: Strategy
Art Director: Matt Noe
Overview
While officially a division of Nike, the Brand Jordan team prides itself on cutting its own path — both operationally and culturally. So it makes sense, with a team spanning the globe, they'd want a way to keep the team connected in order to grow and cultivate that culture. The initial ask on this project was for a native iOS app the mirrored their existing internal communication structure, and in fact their brief came in the form of a organizational hierarchy chart, and the instructions to "make something fly". What we returned to them was a communication system that reflected back the fluid nature of their team communication, the important regional team cultures, and the underlying Jordan ethos that binds all of it.
Understanding the communication culture
One of our first activities was to simply watch and learn. We looked their existing team communications. We watched how they spoke with each other and how they shared information. We looked at what threads ran through the entire global team, and at what elements were specifically regional. In the end what we found was that, not surprisingly, they talked to each other at work the same way they talked to each other outside of the office. The content they shared looked exactly like what you'd find on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook, or in a text. Using this, we created a new content taxonomy that the was built on the way they communicated rather than on any sort of hierarchical structure. Everything could be broken into one of five content types, and then combined, broken apart, and remixed to create new content.
Look Fly, Be Fly — a UI that is as functional as it is expressive
The core UI of the application is divided into three main sections: The Content Feed, the Feed Menu, and Messaging.
The app opens in the Content Feed. Here Jordan team members can see all the activity happening within the brand — from product drops, to shared files, to updates about athletes, to basic info like office closures. Tapping on any element in the feed allows them to save it to their own profile, combined with it other content and republish it, or simply favorite or comment on it.
Sliding the left from the Feed team members are taken to the Feed Menu — one of the most important and useful parts of the app. Here they can create and save sophisticated filters targeting things such as location, content types, or even themes such as "Jordan 4" or "Black shoes". Each filter can be saved, allowing members to easily filter the feed in infinite ways.
Sliding to right, team members are taken to a custom built chat platform. Two years before Slack was launched we created a system for the Jordan to communicate with each other in a simple, private, and secure way, either one-on-one or in ad hoc groups.
Finally, as important as it was for the UI to be high performing, it also had to allow for personal expression. One of our favorite aspects of this was what we called UI Colorways. Based on the most famous color ways of past Jordan products, we created a series of color systems team members could chose from to help make the app feel more like an extension of themselves.
