Academy Sports + Outdoors
As Senior UX Researcher, Gibson helped product and design teams understand Academy's website, store experience, and omnichannel retail journeys.
/ Overview
As Senior UX Researcher, Gibson helped product and design teams understand Academy's website, store experience, and omnichannel retail journeys.
/ Project Details
Name:Academy Sports + Outdoors
Client:Academy Sports + Outdoors
Industries:Sporting goods retail
Date:2015-2017
Role:Senior UX Researcher
/ Challenge
Academy's customers moved between digital and store experiences, while product, navigation, checkout, account, and BOPIS journeys all needed research-backed clarity to support retail-scale decision making.Internal role working with product teams and UI designers to identify customer opportunities, validate concepts through UX research, and support digital retail decision-making.
/ Provided Services
UX research
Ran research that helped teams understand digital and store-connected customer needs.
Strategic analysis
Translated findings into strategic direction for product, merchandising, and experience teams.
Product team discovery
Supported discovery around opportunities that could improve key retail journeys.
/ Solution
As Senior UX Researcher, Gibson provided strategic research and analysis for the website, store experience, and omnichannel connection layers. He worked with product teams to identify customer opportunities and with UI designers to shape concepts validated through UX research.The work supported Academy's digital sales efforts and improved the team's understanding of BOPIS, navigation for 10k+ products, checkout forms and layouts, account experience, OAuth, and social sign-on.
/ Constraints
Large retail product catalog
Research had to support decisions across a large sporting goods catalog with many shopping intents.
10k+ products to organize into meaningful navigation
Navigation needed to help customers browse a broad product set without making the structure feel overwhelming.
Store and digital journey overlap
Customers moved between website and store behavior, so research had to account for both environments.
