Principes Gagnants
year: 2019
company: Principes Gagnants
project duration: 6 weeks (digital part)
my role:
- strategy & business consulting
- web design & content
- information architecture
- experience design
- visual design
PROBLEM & CONTEXT - EMPATHISE & DEFINE
~7 min read
How come that there are more than hundred thousands tennis players in the world but only a small percentage of them can play on a competitive level and make a living out of it ? How come that out of this small percentage, only an even smaller percentage will go on to become the top players at the pinnacle of their sport ? What sets those champions apart ? Would it be possible to learn from them and apply what they do to help everybody reach their level ?
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In order to answer those questions, together with a very good friend of mine we decided to create Principes Gagnants and help more people live from their passion and become true champions. With several years of teaching martial arts and our burning passion for tennis, we investigated champions’ mindsets and habits, we analysed match patterns and assessed training practices in order to develop a coaching method to help athletes perform their best when it matters.
How might we help athletes reach and express their full potential ?
PROCESS - IDEATE, PROTOTYPE & TEST
Having spent several months developing our coaching method and testing and refining it with athletes, asking coaches for feedback, we came to a point where we decided it was time to reflect thoroughly on our business model and our digital strategy. Our combined passion for tennis made us start and grow, but passion alone would not help us make a real impact on athletes’ lives all over the world.
I decided to start by using the « business model & value proposition canvas » to jumpstart our reflexion and make quick progress towards how we wanted to define our core value proposition and the business strategy for our coaching services.
« We want to help athletes, particularly tennis players, reach and express their full potential. For this purpose we created a training method to enhance athletes' mental, physical and technical abilities. We plan to provide athletes with one-on-one training sessions as well as other coaching services tailored to their individual needs. »
The both of us being very clear about what our value proposition was and what kind of business model we wanted to use, it was time to focus on our digital presence and brand identity. We first spent some time on defining a logo and a name. We quickly narrowed it down to the simple but powerful image of the crown, since it’s a symbol of high achievement befitting champions. Those wearing it are the people standing above all else. We decided to use a crown with 5 peaks because there are 5 pillars in our coaching method:
« Develop a vision, use your motivation to improve, trust yourself, manage your emotions and increase your concentration to perform at your best. »
Lastly, the name came from realising that our method was resting on a set of principles that would make the way for success, thus « principes gagnants » (winning principles).
First iteration of the logo
Final logo design
WEBSITE CONTENT CREATION & DESIGN
The next step was the website’s content and structure. After agreeing on using Wix for web development, I had to create and organise the content. I did some rapid paper prototyping so that we could agree on what kind of content would be appropriate, as well as how and where we would display it.
Working on the website was executed with an agile process, always gathering feedback and making changes until we were satisfied. We could have shown it to potential future customers but at that point we did not have any, so we chose to do some guerrilla testing with friends. Since the aim of the website is mainly about informing people about who we are and what we do, usability issues were not our main concern. Testing the clarity of the content however, as well as making obvious what value our service was creating, those were our ultimate aims for user testing. We also wanted to test a particular feature of the site: booking for a session online. This was tested with a group of 5 users and time to complete task, number of clicks, as well as satisfaction and task easiness were measured.
1'30''
avg duration to complete task
7-10
clicks to complete task
4 out of 5
satisfaction rating
6 out of 7
task easiness (SEQ)
The results of user testing allowed us to crystallise the content and structure of the website, although we still made some changes with the overall design and choice of pictures.
COACHING CARDS
With the website being ready and our first customers already training with us, we wanted to create a physical artefact where we could detail our method, the kind of exercises we use as well as the requirements to improve. I found myself inspired by a deck of cards I had received few months ago about the design thinking methodology and tools. I wanted to create a similar concept for our coaching method. We sat together with my friend and we started by creating the content and defining levels and requirements for each levels. I then went on the design phase and created a first iteration of the concept using Sketch. Having limited space and finding ways to communicate a lot of information with few words and images was challenging but definitely exciting as well. After a few iterations, we came to the concept shown below. This is still work in progress and we are always tweaking and improving it until we will be satisfied enough to print it on a physical format.
LAST THOUGHTS
Since we started, we are now training 5 kids with very promising potentials and are always questioning what we do, learning and making our method improve. We believe that this co-creation of value, together with our customers, will help us become better coaches. We are convinced we will help them reach their full potential as they grow and whether that potential is enough to make them top 100, top 10 or number 1 tennis players will only be revealed with time. But we are as sure as hell enjoying the ride and finding great joy in seeing all of them become better athletes and better persons.
Thanks for reading. Oh and by the way, have a look at our website and tell us what you think (it’s in french though).