Global Athletic Footwear & Apparel Brand — Deloitte Consulting
2023 / 2024
Product Innovation Strategist
SUMMARY
The VP of Product Innovation at a leading athletic brand came to my team to craft an art-of-the-possible vision for the future of product creation, focusing on embedding emerging technology across design, development, and merchandising. I led a collaborative design effort: interviewing creators, identifying 40 use cases, shaping four core personas, illustrating technical architecture, and crafting mockups to visualize a future that felt both inspiring and grounded. The outcome was a clear, energizing vision that distilled a complex, ambiguous concept into a storyline leaders could rally around, kick-starting organizational alignment and demonstrating how next-gen tech could elevate not just efficiency but creativity.
PROCESS
1. Identify
My team and I held brainstorming sessions with the VP of Product Innovation, taking the time to understand his vision. During this process, we built the trust and empathy required to visualize his ideas for designers, developers, and merchandisers.
2. Discover
I spent time interviewing lead designers, developers, and merchandisers to understand their processes, goals, and motivations, immersing myself in their worlds.
Throughout the project, we identified 40 use cases applying emerging technologies across the product creation journey that would transform the creator’s innovation, insight, and efficiency.
3. Create & Test
To showcase the integration of this next-generation technology across design, development, and merchandising roles, I created core personas, designed illustrative mockups, and developed a storyline that clearly and creatively communicated our vision and its impact.
Beyond just the front-end experience, we illustrated the technical architecture required to bring the future state vision to life by enlisting the support of industry subject matter experts and interviews with internal data and technology teams.
We brought our creators along the journey by holding workshops to gather input, questions, and understanding of what did (and did not) feel valuable and why.
4. Share
We shared our vision with product and technology leadership to begin the socialization process, growing understanding and buy-in.
OUTCOME
We were successfully able to visualize our VP of Product Innovation's concept and begin the socialization process with key leaders in the organization. While I had never taken on a project with this level of ambiguity or influence before, I was able to use my creativity to take a rather complex vision and distill it into a comprehensible and energizing narrative. We built a vision that showed how emerging technology can impact far beyond just efficiency, transforming creator innovation, creativity, and humanness.
LEARNINGS
Emerging technology requires deep familiarity to understand the application and translate that application into feasible and desirable changes
Understanding product innovation means recognizing the seamless, end-to-end experience and collaboration required across design, development, and merchandising
Holding a visionary role in a traditional organization requires even greater clarity of vision and impact on business objectives
SKILLS
Artificial Intelligence
Executive Advising
Executive Communication
Generative AI
Journey Mapping
Persona Creation
Product Innovation
Prototyping
Technical Architecture
User Interface Design
User Experience
User Research