51SK8 Coach Handbook
The normative nature of commercial institutions contradicts the casual nature of skateboarding culture
Project overview
The service was designed to target first-time users, from the perspective of training the coaches and enhancing the details of their service, to impress the participants who signed up for the first lesson and make them willing to pay for the subsequent skateboarding lessons.
Details
Project partner: 51SK8 Skateboard Shop
When: 2022 - 3 months
Team: Jiaoyan Yang, Xinqi Wang, Jiaxin Chen, Di Wen
Methods: design research (various), insights definition, prototyping, co-design workshops, brainstorming, visual design, book art
My Role: communication with my clients, users, and stakeholders, conduct interviews, build customer journey map, design the deliverables, track the feedbacks
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Yaya for allowing these three great team members to work with me on this project, to 51sk8 for allowing us to realise the opportunity to implement service design for a small commercial entity, and especially to Haohui Liu for helping us make this happen. This is my first project as a freelance service designer and although there is still more that can be done, this project is a win-win for all parties involved and all the hard work has paid off.
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Context
After the initial research, we identified the bottleneck that as small commercial entities all face after a period of development, i.e. the current state of development is good enough to maintain a certain volume of customers, but in the long run, with the expansion of shops, the management of staff and the development of culture is difficult to be managed precisely; at the same time, as operators do not have time to control the details of the design in the daily busy business process In the early stages of the project, we were able to see the opportunity to improve the user experience in terms of detail as an 'outsider'.
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Research
Methods
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Secondary research
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Data collection
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On-site interviews
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Co-creation activities
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Map development
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User journey map
51sk8 skateboard shop trainees are between the ages of 3 and 15, but those who have the financial ability are the parents, (university students and older adults have certain financial ability, most university students also choose to join school clubs for self-learning, so they are not considered).
We found that even if the parents who have signed up do not fully understand the sport, if their child likes the sport, they are willing to pay for the hobby directly. We found that even if the parents did not fully understand the sport, if their child enjoyed it, they would not care about other factors and would be willing to pay for their child's hobby straight away. All the trainees will be familiar with skateboarding through the first session and will learn about the culture and the charm of skateboarding, so we focused our research on the first session.
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In the early stages, we conducted a thorough research on the skate shop, including interviews with the owner, coaches and parents of the trainees. We found these painpoints and opportunities.
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One of the team members also anonymously signed up for a lesson to experience what it was like and to record the first experience from a first-hand perspective.
From the point of view of the current awareness of skateboarding culture in China, skateboarding, as a sport that has just been incorporated into the Olympic culture, still has a lot of potential for development. This is one of the long-term visions that 51sk8 hopes to achieve, which is to expand the influence of skateboarding culture in Fuzhou. So we have proposed a development strategy according to both long term and short term. The immediate goal is to improve the teaching quality of the first experiential lesson and have more wealth accumulation after the participants have signed up, and in the long term after the wealth accumulation, to carry out the expansion on skateboarding culture.
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Problem Statement:
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The normative nature of commercial institutions contradicts the casual nature of skateboarding culture.
How might we...
improve the quality of the lessons through both the skateboarding skills and the cultural experience, so that in the first experience session, new students are satisfied with the quality of the lessons and can feel the attraction of skateboarding and thus pay for the subsequent lessons
Solution
Methods
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Concept development
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Journey mapping
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Empathy mapping
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User testing
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Prototyping
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Visual design
We used empathy map, analogy, the worst possible ideas and user journey map to brainstorm in the ideation stage.
As a small commercial entity, cost is one of the key considerations to be taken into account. Although designing an app would solve most of the management problems, it would require excessive operational costs and with a user group of teenagers who do not have easy access to mobile phones, it would be difficult to use directly, so we ruled out new technological tools. Secondly,we designed an coach manual to help them focus on new trainees' experience before, during and after the first lesson, from awareness of skateboarding culture, teaching and learning, to feedback after the lesson and joining the community. To complement the coach manual, we have designed stickers for 'skateboarding impressions', a 'love' display wall, a post-class evaluation form and a community poster. These design touchpoints can also be used as promotional material to give parents a more visual impression that 51sk8 is a serious skateboard teaching institution, and even impress passers-by, making it a small opportunity point for local cultural promotion in Fuzhou in the long run.
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After three iterations of design and two rounds of testing, the skateboard shop is satisfied with the results of the current design.
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The coach manual can be used as training material for new coaches to improve training management efficiency; the posters can be put up inside the shop for new students to socialise in groups, but also in places where skateboarders are concentrated to enhance cultural exchange and expand the influence of the skateboard shop; over time, the value of the design materials can be gradually appreciated in the use.
