Nike Dance Concepts

Illustrations by Alaina Dekker

Type: Client Project

Skills: Research, Interviews, Workshops Facilitation, Strategy, Ideation

The Challenge

Nike recognizes it is in a unique position to support and propel the sport of dance and its community. They are investing in creating disruptive change in the industry to empower dancers and commercialize opportunities for them. They are specifically interested in legitimizing dance and dancers, supporting the industry from behind the scenes, developing specialized dance products, and helping dancers and the industry make money.

Nike’s Innovations Team believes that future-focused technologies can support this change for dance visionaries and warrants further exploration. They hired us to investigate this hypothesis and explore what it might mean to leverage emerging tech like NFTs, VR, and immersive experiences along with existing tech like Instagram, TikTok, and Discord to design a future for the sport of dance.

The Process

Discovery

In our research, we sought to learn about the evolving landscape of dance, consumer consumption of art, the infrastructure of dance commerce, brands as ambassadors for sports commerce, and future technologies. We immersed ourselves in relevant Nike work, conducted desk research, spoke to key stakeholders, and gathered observations from experiences in the world. We distilled our research into insights to inform our strategy.

TOP INSIGHTS:

A look at NFTs: Today NFTs are still speculative, commonly understood as digital assets. The more versatile future tech is other blockchain enabled opportunities like social tokens.

A look at metaverse: While the metaverse has captured the imagination of current creators, this tech is still a long way off for the common dancer.

Disruption in arts and sports: There are many entry points and efficiencies that would benefit dancers. Among the analogous solutions, there’s not one tech silver bullet. 

Current state of dance: For those interested in dance, the moment is now. There has never been more access to all corners of the industry.

Monetization of dancers: All existing methods of monetization take advantage of the dancer.

Future for dancers: Art-tech is an entirely new industry which will unleash a myriad of opportunities.

Strategy

Based on our insights and Nike’s ambitions, we identified four opportunity areas and guardrails from success. These opportunities areas offered a directional guide for our concepts.

1. Dancer Driven Content

Give audiences a breadth of dance content and education, with dancers creating it and benefiting from the outputs.

2. The Value Exchange

Connect dancers and fans in more direct ways, to create their own exchange of value.

3. A Marketplace for Dance

Create a marketplace for dance where unique movement, creations and accessories can be bought or borrowed with proper attribution for market rates.

4. Tech Dance: A New Form

Move the industry forward with dance technology, making it accessible for all audiences and providing dancers a new form and a stage.

Ideation

We established principles for ideation and conducted two ideation workshops with Nike stakeholders and guest designers. We then prioritized the ideas and tested the top ideas with dance experts to refine the ideas further. The final concepts were presented to Nike’s Innovations team along with recommendations on how to develop the ideas in the short, medium, and long term.

The Final Concepts

  • Dancer Fitness Content

    Cross-training fitness education to help dancers improve their performance and prevent injury.

    Audience: Dancers of all levels and dance students

  • VIP MoCap Studio Experience

    An invite-only collaboration at the Nike lab for select athletes and crews to create digital performances with the latest motion capture technology.

    Audience: Elite dancers, dance fans, and spectators

  • Elevated Dance Classes

    Remote dance classes that leverage advanced tech to add personalized instruction.

    Audience: Dancers and dance students

  • Professional Dance Marketplace

    A marketplace for dancers/choreographers to sell their work in new digital formats.

    Audience: Brands, creative directors, filmmakers, animators, game developers, metaverse developers, etc.

  • Community Dance Network

    A network of Nike-backed dance studios across the world where local dancers can get studio benefits and connect with the brand.

    Audience: Dancers, dance instructors, and choreographers

  • Nike-verse Dance Competitions

    An interactive dance competition that celebrates the best dancers across genres and encourages community engagement.

    Audience: Dancers, fans, and general public

  • Nike Dance Icons

    A cross-platform educational tool that celebrates top dance athletes and elevates their hustle.

    Audience: Dance fans and general public

  • Nike Dance Exchange

    New sources of funding for dancers/crews using blockchain and social tokens with rich, unique content for fans.

    Audience: Dancers, dance crews, dance students, dance fans, Nike fans, blockchain/social token aficionados

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