A Doblin project

How might we adapt the best of the local food scene to create a more compelling in-stadium food and beverage experience for Toronto Blue Jays fans?

When the Toronto Blue Jays were considering a stadium redesign, Doblin was asked to shine a light on what the fans might want. With only 5 weeks to work with, we quickly honed in on food and beverage as a realistic topic to focus on. Our research looked at the baseball experience, the Toronto food scene, and the overlap in between – the in- stadium food and beverage experience.

We brought 20 foodies, die- hard Jays fans, and Jays foodies together in one room for a co-design workshop so they could riff off each other’s experiences and ideas. Over 4 hours, participants worked through a series of exercise in small groups. Activities included food tray rapid prototyping, drawing a mental maps of the stadium, a card sort on what factors are most important to the overall stadium experience, and a group discussion on lineups.

Final deliverables for this project included a behavioural modes of eating framework to supplement the Jays’ existing fan personas, key insights to consider when moving forward with the stadium redesign plans, and a shortlist of orthodoxies ripe for disrupting. Due to NDA, actual output cannot be shared.

This project got a second life when we made an exhibit out of it as a way to introduce Doblin and our HCD approach to the rest of our Deloitte colleagues. The exhibit stayed up in the lobby of the Deloitte office for 2 weeks. Hat tip to Eleni and Mary for their mad construction skills.

Client

Toronto Blue Jays

Industry

Professional sports

Key words

Co-design, generative research, workshop facilitation

Additional team members

Eric Arthrell, Eleni Alpous, Minnar Xie

Project highlights
1

Kicking off the project with a new problem framing approach grounded in co-design, sacrificial prototyping, and the behavioural economics principle of anchoring. Created a set of cards that showed the client what a good problem frame looks like and how it impacts the research approach.

2

Building on the strong sense of loyalty participants had towards their team by giving them iPhones to record selfie videos of anything else they wanted to say directly to the Jays executive team.

3

Trying to tell Mark Shapiro (President & CEO) that there was room for improvement with how the stadium handles its lineups (i.e. queues) — and him thinking I was giving him advice on his batting lineup (!)