LEGO's new opportunity to stretch brand to creative outdoor play.
LEGO is designed for indoor environment, therefore, if we expand our brand into outdoor play, we will be able to overcome the limitation of indoor play.
We were ranked as the world’s most powerful brands in 2015 with reaching total corporate revenue of 5.2 billion$ last year with 25.2% revenue growth. Within 5 years, we’ve doubled our revenue value. LEGO has reached 100 million kids through our various products and communities. In 2016, the toy industry is expecting to bring major profit from "Smart Play," but LEGO can offer better system that encourages a creative observatory activity while incorporating smart toy. Our innovative product, LEGO Inspiration offers a creative experience from outdoors observation while allowing both girls and boys to see, learn and explore.
My Approach
LEGO Inspiration mainly focuses on 7-13 years old both girls and boys as a main target user; however, since the user group is 7-13 years old kids and buyer group is 30s and 40s parents, I had to consider designing a product that not only satisfies buyer's criteria, but also attracts user group. In LEGO brand's profit aspect, I explored a new area that LEGO hasn’t expanded resulting corporation growth in the next few years. Therefore, the opportunity area I found was to broaden LEGO into an outdoor exploratory experience while consolidate our brand as a gender-neutral toy company.
Design Strategy
Understanding LEGO Brand Equity
“There are 915,103,765 ways to combine 6 LEGO bricks.”
Our brand always keep in mind of inspiring and developing the builders of tomorrow. We design products that are imaginative, creative, fun, caring, learning, and high-quality. Our business responsibilities are to inherit healthy planet by increasing energy efficiency; using wind farm to produce energy power, and reduce CO2 emission, to create high-quality and safe product, and lastly to support Children’s rights with UNICEF; however, from thorough understanding of LEGO brand and consumer insights, the most appealing value of LEGO brand was “creativity.”
Design Research
Brand Offerings
We currently offer variety of things. We have our iconic construction LEGO bricks. For LEGO Education, we offer STEM learning system for school, social & environmental responsibility, and an active community for adults and kids. Not only concentrating on physical toys, we offer an entertainment and interactive experience.
Design Strategy
Era Analysis | Smarter Kids
Kids exposed to smart devices at earlier age, should parents restrict their “smart play” or should we adapt it in smart way?
One of the biggest reasons for LEGO outdoor is the high exposure of tech devices for kids. The rapid growth of high tech devices resulted our children consume over 3 hours of media in a typical day in 2016. Kids are used to tapping on a ipad while waiting for the order at the restaurant, parents and kids playing interactively via mobile applications at home; kids play is now connected strongly to the smart devices. If we cannot avoid the play involving the screens, what can we suggest in order to let our kids enjoy the outdoor environment as we do not give up the smart experience?
Design Research
User Insight | Sharing Creation
Throughout user research, I found kids love sharing what they have built and it was really interesting how different they share it. Some of them took a picture of the lego with a reference image, some of them put them into a realistic environ- ment, some of them wanted studio setting.
Design Research
Buyer Insight | Inspiring Outdoors, but Safety Matters
Once we step one foot outside of our house, we already have inspiring environment full of objects that can bring creativity to our children. Throughout buyer research, I found parents encourage their kids to go outside and socialize with friends. They need to spend less time staring at the screen for several hours. When they let their kids out, parents wanted not to worry about them being in danger such as following strangers.
Design Strategy | Opportunity
Outdoor Play & Gender Neutrality
In 2012, LEGO introduced LEGO Friends for girls market; however, parents and feminists brought up a question why their kids need pink and purple colored, leisure themed special toys. This gendered toy issue was critical for the brand image although the sales pro t has grown up 35% in that year. The solution is devleoping an aspect of mutual play, which is Outdoor Play.
Design
Design Criteria
Design
Ideation
Exploration of trendy, combination of mobile device play allowed me to understand the up-to-date design approaches that I can explore. However, through the ideation process, it was hard to keep ideas to connect to our equity. In order not to lose our essence and pro t strategy, it was critical to make sure I have a right product while achieving the goal.
Final Design
LEGO Inspiration with App
Final Design
LEGO Inspiration Box
Final Design
User Scenario | Introducing 3 Main User Types
Introducing Juliette's Journey
1. Juliette, a future architect, and her mother goes for a walk to get inspired from their neighborhood. During the observation, Juliette finds a house looks interesting and take a snapshot of the house using LEGO Inspiration.
2. Juliette and her mom returns to home, Juliette starts building her new future house that will be built by her. Her future house LEGO model idea comes from her LEGO Inspiration Visual Journal, she builds the LEGO while seeing the picture that she took.
3. A few weeks later, Juliette’s family goes on a trip to downtown Chicago from Champaign, IL. Juliette and her sister are excited about what kinds of beautiful architecture they are going to see in Chicago. Juliette wants to see Willis Tower.
4. Juliette’s family is on a tourism boat and Juliette finally faces the Willis Tower, it looks more enormous and beautiful than she thought before. She takes a snapshot in Inspiration app and notes how she felt about the building, all the excitement!
5. Juliette’s family arrives at home after a long trip to Chicago Loop. She immediately opens the Inspiration app and starts building it with LEGO Inspiration Buildings Edition.
Introducing Caroline's Journey
1. Caroline’s family is going to the Chase Palm Park in Santa Barbara, CA. Because Caroline loves animals, her family often visits nearby national parks. As soon as Caroline arrives there, she starts recruiting any kids near the Chase Palm Park for her journey to find pond friends. Before the journey with her friends, Caroline’s mom connects the GPS system to safely track her daughter.
2. Caroline and her new friends explore around the park and finds a lot of interesting insects, frogs, squirrels, and flowers nearby the pond. Caroline takes snapshots using the LEGO Inspiration.
3. On her way home, Caroline shares what she found today with her sister via app connection, and talks about all the interesting animals she met with her mom.
4. Caroline liked the squirrel that she found the most, so she decides to build a squirrel friend in LEGO. Even though there wasn’t any building instruction, she finds it joyful to build using her images.
Introducing Fred's Journey
1. Fred’s family visits the LeMay-America's Car Museum since Fred is a huge fan of supercars and 1960s classic cars. While touring the museum, Fred finds one of his favorite vehicles and takes a snapshot using LEGO Inspiration.
2. After a long museum tour, Fred found about 25 vehicles that he likes. As his family enters the parking lot to leave the museum, who knew Fred’s favorite “Bumble Bee” car is parked next to Fred family’s van?! - and it was in pure yellow color! Immediately with the excitement, Fred and his dad takes a snapshot.
3. Thinking of every vehicles that he liked and his snapshot at the museum, Fred adds sketches on the photo because he wants his own upgrade to his lego model.
4. Fred finishes 3 sportscar LEGO models today! LEGO Inspiration’s reference images and add-on sketches inspired him as he builds them.
5. Fred scans the model and uploads to his garage collection. Now, Fred’s garage collection has expanded to 8 vehicles stored in total. An hour later, his friend, Henry liked Fred’s creation and commented about the new collection.